Choose which alias can log in to Proton
Hello Outlook.com now is accepting to choose what alias can be used to login on account to improve security.
Why Proton mail dont do the same thing? with this we are protected from botnets(credential stuffing or brute force), because we can create a alias and dont share the username with anyone.
Thanks
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Remy commented
Really looking forward to it.
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Proton User commented
I would like to see the same thing. If I could create an account with a primary email address that I give to nobody, then have an email alias that I use every day but which can't be used to log in, I would feel that my account was more secure. Please consider including this option, thank you.
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Pierre's Blog commented
I was surprised to discover that, when I create a new email address, it functions as a username for login purposes.
I went out of my way to create a strong sequence of characters as my username.
If I want to create a more convenient email address to hand out to some people, I don't want that guessable string to function as a username.This weakness means that I never create additional email addresses.
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Alexander commented
Hi Proton Mail team, thanks for your great work on this application. I just want to add my intense agreement to this thread. This is a totally critical security measure for me and stands out as an unusual gap in security for an otherwise remarkably secure suite of tools. I agree with others in this thread that it would be great to either limit login to username only, so as to never need to expose any component of login credential publicly, or if not that then the ability to toggle each email as a login option. In the case of toggles, personally I'd toggle a single one on and treat it precisely like a never-shared username, so the username approach would be totally sufficient for my use case, but I recognize the relative lack of flexibility of that approach compared to the toggles. Regardless of mode of solution, I absolutely must be able to restrict the ability to login to my Proton account for a specific address. Until then, I keep finding myself jumping back to Gmail (extremely reluctantly) in order to send outgoing messages, and it's becoming a major problem when it comes to custom domain email address management.
Again, thank you very much for these tools, they're essential to me, which is precisely why I feel so strongly about the criticality of this feature request. Appreciate all your hard work!
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Bryan commented
Alongside everyone else's concerns, I discovered today that it is possible to log in to a proton account using a custom domain email address active on the account.
Which, for some, may be the desirable functionality.
In my case, its not. I want to be able to have added addresses, both proton and custom domain, but have only one of them valid for logging into proton. Purpose being, not sharing the primary login address publicly.
I was checking out using SL to accomplish this, but it's also not quite there yet. Proton mail does not automatically pick up aliases you made in SL for when drafting and sending a message. You've got to go into SL and do a bunch of manual stuff to use it this way.
So using SL as a work around to accomplish the goal of hiding your PM login is still rather cumbersome.
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unlimited user commented
Been a paid user for years and was surprised to find this security issue doing a personal audit on attack vectors. This is a critical issue so much so that I'm in the process of deleting all aliases so I'm left with a single email address. I will be transitioning to creating hide-my-email alias in proton pass.
This is unfortunate because there is a use case for "permanent" Proton Mail aliases and "temporary" Proton Pass emails. Increasing my attack surface at login is not an option so, again, I will be burning all aliases even though I depend on some of them.
I believe the lowest lift to develop this feature would be to give the user the option to login by username ONLY (no email address derivatives). The ability to select which email alias is designated for the username could be next iteration.
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Jetsky commented
In line with this would be the ability to set a default email address other than the primary address to avoid accidentally exposing your primary email when writing a new email. It’s all too easy to forget to select an alias address when in the midst of dealing with something pressing.
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Banja commented
The simplest way to have a 'second password' for our accounts: a not public username for login and , in case it's found out, change it easily. It allows to reduce the surface attack for our accounts.
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d1mia commented
the ability to use an alias that doesn't give access to the account is an essential security point (and has been proposed by Microsoft for a long time).
This evolution is essential for good security -
Tanner commented
This is really important to me, specifically allowing us to change our underlying username. I assume changing the sign-in email is changing the username.
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JD commented
If someone knows your password and has access to your second factor (TOTP and/or security keys) you are already so compromised that they probably know what you had for breakfast and can watch you when you go to the toilet. They will know all your aliases, and then some.
This suggestion is naive and misguided. Saying that you want a secret username because you fear you won't be able to keep secret two authentication factors is very silly not to mention contradictory.
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Garance_D commented
I think this would be a valuable addition to security on my proton-mail accounts, with no downside. I realize the login-account name would use up one of my allotted email addresses, which is fine.
Or maybe add a setting to each email address created, which lets the user specify that that specific email address cannot be used to login to proton's mail servers. That way I could have multiple addresses which *could* login, but I would set the most-visible addresses so that those can never be used for login. I would set that option on any email address that I use on busy mailing lists, for instance.
Disclaimer: I'm still figuring out my way around Proton's features, so I might not have the right idea of the difference between a "proton account" and an "email address"...
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Forged commented
Fully support this as I can currently log in to my entire proton account (admittedly needing 2FA) with any of 10 different email addresses (some of which are openly available on my website and already get hit with spam so are clearly not secure!).
At least an option to choose a single login username for the account (and sacrifice one custom email address solely for login) would be a compromise. -
mih commented
This is critical
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K commented
I'm pretty sure this one is also talking about the same feature: https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-proton-mail/suggestions/41299552-default-login-address-options
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K commented
My Outlook.com logs showed that bots / bad actors are regularly trying to sign in using my public addresses. What I did I created a new alias and disabled an option to sign in for everything except this new alias. It's clean now. I'm not going to share / use this alias anywhere. I hope PM will add something similar too. I want a single "private" alias / email address for sign in. Any other address in this account should reject any sign in attempt.
While having a good password is still the most important thing it's nice to have a username no one knows about. -
voyager2bird commented
My preference would be to never use my primary proton account to login to Proton apps. I would prefer to use an alias to do that so my primary is never exposed.
I like the idea of a check box to enable/disable the alias as Login option.
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anon12333 commented
this has been here since 2020 and still not been implemented. hope they add this in soon so I can actually start using my other emails. commenting here to show people r still interested in this feature
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CW commented
I absolutely support this request for the stated reasons.
I want my default mail address for outgoing mail NOT to be a login option.My login should preferably be secret. I want to chose my default address for outgoing mail in a way that I can discard it if needed (in case I hit "send" too early "send" or make a similar mistake...).
Currently, I am using a custom domain for my default address. I was completely surprised that I was able to log into Proton with that as my login. It felt like this should not be possible. -
Paul commented
There is a similar idea here https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas/suggestions/46755520-alias-does-not-enter-the-main-account.
Perhaps they should be merged and votes added together?