*Unlimited* Disposable Email Aliases
(to vote for unlimited alias, visit https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483/suggestions/45394132)
Startmail explains it perfectly. They offer unlimited disposable aliases, which expire within a given amount of time. They also offer custom aliases which can be saved and used indefinitely.
It is the disposable alias which will help protect privacy, when submiting an email to an untrusted recipient. After all, how much privacy do we have if our fixed emails become the foundation for building and selling our marketing profiles, just as is done by gmail. We limit personal activity virtual trails by disposing of aliases for casual uses. But, unlike custom aliases, which build on our identifiable original email address, disposable aliases divert from our true email identity by utilizing a sub-domain created for this specific purpose, such as: xxx@tda.protonmail.com (tda = temporary disposable alias)
You avoid abuse by limiting disposable alias creation on a daily basis. Perhaps 5 max per day.
Here is Startmail's explanation:
https://support.startmail.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/3/0/aliases
The Blur service (by Abine) also offers a "masked mail" free service. But their service is not encrypted:
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Anonymous commented
Yes
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Mad As commented
...and yet ANOTHER alias defect:
1. Write up an email with the correct alias showing as the [Sender]/[Reply To].
2. Save as draft
3. Reopen draft
4. [Sender]/[Reply To] has switched back to the underlying, base email with NO WAY to restore the desired alias that was originally selected/exposed.Really proton Devs, you've got a bit of cheek to be considering new functionality when your base functionality is so half baked, especially when you have paying customers for that functionality to be in place.
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Casper Jonquil Mad as Hell commented
Hello,
The use of the "+" plus sign kills it for protonmail alias' on so many email systems. Show your support here:
I post this feature/change request as a fork from this discourse. It's related but deserves the same attention and support.
Please consider passing some of your votes in its direction.
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Captain Paranoia commented
I use Spamex.com with individual addresses for practically every bank, business, service, etc., and it works very well.
According to their FAQs ( http://www.spamex.com/help/FAQ.cfm ),
"3. Will a Real Email Address be revealed if a reply is made to a message sent to a Disposable Email Address?
"When a user replies from their Real Email Address to a email that was sent to one of their Disposable Email Addresses, the reply will go through the Service and the recipient will only see the Disposable Email Address as the "FROM address".
The "Message Header" is re-written to protect the user's Real Email Address."This may be a viable option.
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Anonymous commented
Providing alias to email address may simplify spam email senders. Senders email address is not private. Email receiver has the right to know the sender's original email address.
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Maj commented
+1!!!
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Casper Jonquil Mad as Hell commented
Re: Real Alias,
Yes, I noticed this was added; somewhat under the cover of darkness. But even then it was only implemented for desktop UI not mobile version (Android). Which is completely frustrating.
Further, on the desktop implementation it only permits replies to existing emails to use the +alias feature. So if you want to send-out from a +alias address without exposing your underlying address (to some degree) or to at least preserve the known address that the recipient has in their address book then you need to:
1. Via desktop version only (what a drag).
2. Send an email address to yourself using the desired +alias
3. Then <forward> the received email.
4. Then remove all the FWD junk wrappers.
5. Then write and send your email to the target recipient.What a complete waste of time. I may as well simply write it on paper and post it.
Which part of the PROTON people can't get this? It was raised this week where Facebook Fuckerberg himself admitted they track non-Facebook users (by pseudo ghost accounts). How do you think they do this? They cross-match on key data like phone numbers and email addresses from contact lists uploaded from Whatsapp and Facebook applications from willing and unknowning users.
Surely Protonmail can assist by simply implementing a true alias system.
Grrr.
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Anonymous commented
You want an alias that can't be used to sign in to your account so that you can give it out to companies or other people and know they can't use it to access your info.
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PROTONuser25 commented
It is a privacy key feature that the most part of the world should not know your real E-Mail address. Therefor such a function would lift your privacy functionality massively!
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[Deleted User] commented
I also am frustrated that many sites do not allow +. Another solution is needed.
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Real Alias commented
FWIW, you can now reply to an email received at yourname+alias@protonmail as that same yourname+alias@protonmail. It's a step in the right direction, but doesn't support anonymity or ability to cut off spammers...
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Greg commented
I would love to click a button in the app to create a random email address that I could later delete. The intent here is to avoid giving my email address to anyone I don't personally trust to not sell it to spammers. As a practical matter, I think this feature would have to include a way to tag these disposable addresses to remember why they were created.
This actually solves two problems for me, personally. The first is that it gives me the option to permanently shutdown spammers. The second, via tagging, is it tells me who is selling my information so I can act accordingly.
There are email forwarding services that provide this functionality, but, ironically, their terms of service had this: "... which means not sharing with anyone that might abuse it [your email]." So they sell your info but only to non-abusive spammers?
I love what proton mail is doing and will support them by upgrading but I need some more control to transition to it. Secure email from spammers isnt quite enough.
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Anonymous commented
the guerrillamail problem would not apply if you likit the feature to custom domains. otherwise this might lead to blocking of the "normal" @protonmail.com adresses...
But i do think that their silence on some features is telling us enough about their modus operandi. well i will definitly switch if that feature and real pgp support aren't added by june when my current plan ends.
i mean how damn hard is it to add this or pgp? protonmail is still a closed system in regards to encrypted email to other users. pity it started really good.
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centigrade barometer commented
I agree, the way Yahoo does it is a proper truly disposable address that protects your real email address. The way Protonmail (and Gmail) do it, but just letting you add a subname with a "+" in your real email address does not protect your real email address and is not disposable. It's just a handy way to filter incoming email into different boxes if you want to.
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centigrade barometer commented
This is really not the same thing as a truly disposable address. Anyone can easily guess your real email address, just by ignoring everything including and after the "+". And since this is a common scheme (Gmail uses it) any not stupid spammer would now how to automatically strip the irrelevant part of the email address.
The way Yahoo does it is better, where you have an entirely separate address that you can create disposable addresses out of. If you regular address is test@protonmail.com, the your disposable address might be spam+[fill in something]@protonmail.com. This way an email sent to spam@protonmail.com would be invalid and go nowhere and when you dispose of an address the email just gets bounced back.
Whereas in the current protonmail scheme any email with a "+" subname to it will always be deliverable and users have to filter it in our out. That's really not what a disposable address is. You want the spammers to get the email bounced back as undeliverable.
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Anonymous commented
It has probably been said already but most sites are catching on to Guerrilla Mail. It would be nice to have a fresh player. For the DEV's Check Guerrillamail.com I would pay for this feature if it works.
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DG commented
I look forward to the day when ProtonMail accepts my email alias from another service. I have had the alias for about 20 years and it would be nice to pipe it directly into my current ProtonMail setup. I bring it in via Gmail, as a work around.
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David commented
Love the idea, though it might be something you plan when your service starts. It might be hard to implement this now.
Maybe using randomly generated aliases like example+qSe520ExW@protomail.com and letting them expire after x days or as long you need to would be quicker to add.
Once the alias is expired, you block all incoming mails. Mails would be only delivered to example+qSe520ExW@protomail.com and not to example@protomail.com.
If the address is leaked spammers won't be able to send their mails. I suggest adding this feature to user domains only because if you add something like @disp.protonmail.com (disp stands for disposable) websites will know this email is worthless.
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Jan Korous commented
I would love protonmail implement something like mailhero.io does. You register some prefix (e. g. myusername@protonmail.com) and can use and manage all virtual sub-addresses (e. g. foo.myusername@...).
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n5i4inti4ntinio4ti commented
Would be handy for signing up with certain sites without getting a huge ton of spam and newsletters and such.
I understand that some sites hate people having disposable email addresses, mostly due to spam. ProtonMail already has spam filters in place scanning inbound and outbound emails, and they could also limit the number of emails sent from these disposable addresses to maybe 5 per day. It would also greatly increase privacy by preventing a digital trail of the exact email addresses across many sites.