Email aliases: What is an alias and how does it improve online security?

An alias address is an additional address linked to your primary email account. Aliases allow you to have multiple email addresses within a single email account, so you can keep your primary address private.

What is an email alias?

An email alias is an additional email address that can be used for different purposes. You can have your primary mail address and then add additional aliases all in one email account.Your email aliases will have different addresses but still arrive in your primary mailbox, saving you time and enabling you to stay private. You might want to only share your primary address with friends and family and use additional aliases for work contacts, newsletter sign-ups, online registrations, and more.

As we become more digitalized, share more personal details online, and are heavily tracked, protecting your digital identity and personal data is more important than ever. Through using an email alias, you can protect your identity, increase your security, and keep your mailbox organized. Aliases add an additional layer of security by preventing the sharing of personal information across multiple online platforms. This means that in the event of a data breach, your primary email address will not be disclosed, only a disposable alias which can be deactivated at any time.

Keep your primary email address for private use, and use multiple email aliases for different purposes like business or online accounts.

Here’s an example set of email aliases:

Benefits of additional email addresses

There are many benefits of using email aliases beyond minimizing the threat of data breaches. Among others, a few benefits worth highlighting are that aliases help you manage your inbox, increase your security, and they can reduce the amount of spam you receive. This is achieved by taking advantage of the “disposable” nature of email aliases. Should one address begin receiving spam, you can quickly create spam rules to block the offending sender or you can even deactivate the alias entirely. If the email alias no longer exists, the spam cannot be delivered. You can take this to the extreme by using a custom domain to create unique aliases for every platform, for example MyTwitter@mydomain.com, MyAmazon@mydomain.com, and MyLinkedin@mydomain.com. This has the added advantage of knowing exactly what service exposed or shared your email address if you start receiving spam to this specific address. If you only used the email address to sign up for a specific newsletter, you can locate and block the culprits fast.

An email alias, does a lot more than just protect your primary address, a few top benefits of using an additional address include reducing spam and phishing and helping keep your mailbox organized.

Keep your mailbox organized

If you think your mailbox is overflowing and unorganized, you’re not alone. For many people, keeping their inbox neat and organized seems unachievable. When you get multiple emails from your online subscriptions, social media accounts, banks, and mix that in with some spam and phishing mail – it’s quite impossible.

Luckily, email aliases are a quick and effective way to help keep your inbox, categorized, neat, and organized. Aliases are a simple and useful way to stay organized and utilize your mailbox efficiently, because they streamline your ability to automatically sort your incoming emails.

When setting up aliases in Tuta Mail, for example, we’d recommend creating aliases for different types of purposes (newsletters, subscriptions, work, family), setting up inbox rules, and directing these incoming emails to their own separate folders. This means that when you receive a work related email or a payment notification for your Netflix subscription, they would automatically be sorted to different dedicated folders. This keeps your main inbox folder from being buried beneath a wave of automated emails.

With Tuta Mail you can easily add an inbox rule by setting the ‘To recipient’ as the alias newsletters@youraddress.com, which then directs all emails to this email address to a specific folder, e.g. a folder named “Newsletters”. If you wish to further organize, you can create subfolders within that “Newsletters” folder for each unique publication. This will save time as you won’t need to scroll through a long list of emails before locating your desired email. This can be even easier when using a custom domain as you will be able to create an infinite number of unique and accurate aliases using your own domain.

By using Tuta’s aliases along with dedicated folders, you don’t need to let personal, work, and other emails get mixed without the hassle of bouncing between multiple accounts!

How email aliases can increase your security

Protect your primary address and identity

Using email aliases allows you to remain anonymous, by not forcing you to hand out your primary email address. When you use different email addresses, it becomes harder for third parties to track you across the web. On top of that, you can remain anonymous when signing up for newsletters or on websites as you can use an email address as alias that does not contain your name or other identifying information. You can even create “burner” aliases, which are used for a single task and are then deactivated as soon as they are no longer needed. These throw-away email addresses are great for snagging a discount coupon that asks for an email to receive a code.

How email aliases can reduce spam

Email aliases also help you reduce spam mail. When you start receiving spam to your alias email address, you can simply deactivate the alias. Upon deactivating your alias address, no more emails will be received by this address. This is particularly handy with the above example as some newsletter services share your email address with third parties, which can then lead to a wave of spam. Not only does the use of different e-mail addresses for different senders protect you from potentially malicious emails, but it also helps paint a clearer picture of which online entities are playing fast and loose with your data.

When you are using Tuta domain aliases, you can deactivate these aliases only, not delete them. When you are using custom domain aliases in Tuta Mail, you can delete them entirely. Plus with your own domain, aliases are not limited so you can create as many email addresses as you need. Thus, when using a custom domain, you can rotate through aliases as often as you like. You can even create a catch-all using a domain which will allow you to create completely random throw-away addresses when prompted to sign up for newsletters, platforms, or discounts. All emails can then also be automatically sorted into a specific folder via filters keeping your inbox clean and tidy.

Email aliases reduce the risk of Phishing

Using email aliases is one way you can easily distinguish, and help prevent phishing emails. If you receive an email from a company you pay a monthly fee to, like your bank or an online account, but the email is sent to another email address instead of the dedicated alias, this would be a sign to be extra cautious as it’s highly likely that it’s a phishing email.

These phishing campaigns are often built upon leaked data. The bad actors try to impersonate the site you signed up for, and often cross-reference this data from other available data breaches for to go further with their attacks to find out your login credentials. By using unique email aliases, you can completely avoid this kind of attack because you will never use the same email address twice. The attackers will not be able to match email addresses between services and because you are a smart password manager user, all you would need to do in a data breach event that contained one of your email addresses is change the password of the breached service and update your account on this platform to use a new alias email address. This beats scrambling to change multiple passwords and account details after using the same credentials across multiple websites.

How Tuta protects your data with aliases and users

Tuta Revolutionary, Legend, and Business plans give you two options to add additional email addresses to your account:

• Email aliases
• Users

Email aliases are additional email addresses. Emails sent to this address go to your primary Tuta mailbox; there’s no separate login to access the emails sent to these addresses. You can also reply directly using your alias address from your main Tuta mailbox.

Users are separate mailboxes with their own login. Adding users makes sense if you need mailboxes for multiple users, for example, for family members, a game group, or employees.

When you choose any paid Tuta account, each user gets one mailbox with available email alias slots, calendars, and an address book.

With all paid Tuta accounts you get an end-to-end encrypted mailbox with a minimum of three custom domains, a minimum of 15 extra email addresses, multiple calendars, and an address book. With Revolutionary, Legend, or Business Tuta plans, you can add as many users as you like. Each user will have their own mailbox, calendar, and address book. Additional users are not included in the basic packages and are a paid addition which can be activated or deactivated as needed.

If you need more aliases or more storage, you can always upgrade to a higher plan in your Tuta account.

How to create an email alias

How do I add an email alias to my Tuta Mail account?

Tuta users can add multiple email addresses to their mailbox by following these four quick and easy steps.

Creating multiple alias addresses with custom domains is easy with Tuta Mail! If you’ve already got a Revolutionary, Legend, or Business account, simply follow the steps below to create an alias in seconds. If you’re not a Tuta Mail user yet, click here to sign up for end-to-end encrypted email now! From there you canfollow the simple steps below to get an email alias in seconds.

1. Open Tuta Mail
2. Click the Settings icon
3. Under Settings, click Email
4. Scroll down to email addresses, click Show
5. Click on the plus symbol
6. Enter your preferred email addresses
7. Click on the downward-facing triangle, to select a domain
8. Enter your chosen sender name
9. Click Ok

You also have the option to set your custom domain as a catch-all address, which means that any and all emails sent to an address using your correct “@domain.com” will arrive even if they are sent with an accidental typo. Catch-all is a great choice if you want to use throw-away email addresses and can’t be bothered to set up these addresses as aliases. If you are concerned about your domain receiving too much spam, you can always add multiple domains to your account using one only for the purpose of creating throw-away email addresses with catch-all. Domains ending with the top-level .xyz are often available for a small yearly cost.

How to add an alias in Outlook, Gmail, and iCloud

If you’re using a popular email provider like Gmail, Outlook, or iCloud Mail, you can jump through some loops to get an alias, but they require extra steps and hassle. With all three providers below,if you’d like to create an alias with your own domain (@yourdomain.com), you will need a paid plan.

How to create an email alias in Gmail

It’s worth noting that with adding aliases to a free Gmail account, by default the aliases only work for receiving emails and not for sending. If you respond to an email sent to your alias address, the email will get sent from your primary email address – so you won’t have any privacy protection for your main address. This may lead to you inadvertently disclosing your e-mail address which can negate the value of the alias.

If you’d like to send an email from an alias address in Gmail, you’ll need to take additional steps to add them in the Gmail settings.

+aliases in Gmail

Gmail offers a simple feature for free known as “+aliases” that can help you manage your inbox more efficiently. By adding a +alias-extensions to your email address, you can automatically sort and filter incoming emails without creating multiple accounts or real alias addresses.

If you’re on a free Gmail plan, one way to receive emails to an alias address is by using a +alias. If your primary Gmail address is LolaBiggs@gmail.com to add a +alias you would need to add a plus sign (+) with another keyword before @gmail.com. For example, LolaBiggs+newsletters@gmail.com. When you use a plus symbol along with another keyword, Gmail creates an alias address.

Examples of +aliases:

• LolaBiggs+subscriptions@gmail.com for online subscriptions and receipts. If an email is sent to this plus email address, you can sort it to a specific folder called “Subscriptions”.
• LolaBiggs+newsletters@gmail.com for online newsletters. If an email is sent to this plus email address, you can sort it to a specific folder called “Newsletters”.
• LolaBiggs+sports@gmail.com for your sports activities and memberships. If an email is sent to this plus email address, you can sort it to a specific folder called “Sports”.

Benefits of +aliases

As real email alias addresses, +aliases help you better organize your mailbox by using automatic filters to sort incoming emails to dedicated folders. However, +aliases lack many benefits that you would get withreal email alias addresses.

Limitations of +aliases

However, today +aliases are no longer really helpful. Spammers have largely adapted to Gmail’s +aliases feature, reducing its effectiveness for privacy. Initially, +aliases were a clever way to track and filter emails based on their source. For example, you could sign up for a service with LolaBiggs+ServiceXY@gmail.com and easily identify if that address was sold or leaked. However, over time, spammers and malicious actors have become aware of this trick. Many now strip out the +alias part when collecting and selling email addresses. As a result, the original email address (LolaBiggs@gmail.com) is exposed, and spammers can target it directly so that the protection provided by the use of +aliases is negligible.

This doesn’t mean +aliases are entirely useless - they still help with organization and filtering - but their ability to shield your primary email address from spam has been compromised.

In addition, plus aliases are not always recognized. Some websites and services may not accept emails with a + in the email address, potentially causing registration or communication issues.

How to create an alias in Outlook

1. Open Outlook Mail
2. Click on the gear icon to access settings
3. Click Mail
4. Select Forwarding and IMAP
5. Under Email aliases click Manage or choose a primary alias
6. Under Account alias select Add email
7. Select Create a new Outlook.com email address and add it as an alias
8. Enter your chosen alias address
9. Click Add alias

How to get an alias for iCloud Mail

1. Open iCloud Mail and click on the gear icon
2. Click Settings
3. Click Account
4. Click Add Alias
5. Enter your chosen alias address
6. Choose a label (optional)
7. Enter an alias name. This appears in the ‘from’ field when you send an email
8. Click Create

You want more? Choose security!

Tuta Mail gives you a lot more than multiple email aliases with custom domains – although those are pretty awesome.

When you choose Tuta Mail as your email provider, you are choosing privacy and security.

Tuta Mail was released as the first end-to-end encrypted email provider 10 years ago, and earlier this year, Tuta Mail released the world’s first post-quantum encryption protocol for mail.

Have you noticed a pattern?

At Tuta Mail, we are dedicated to giving our users and the world, cutting edge, quality data protection and security email solutions. We’re leading the way forward for privacy and security.Get more than email aliases with custom domains, click here to get an end-to-end encrypted mailbox now!