Photo by Salty Justice on Unsplash
I believe there are four items in our online lives that we should make a commitment to guard and protect. The first item is our personal email address, a foundational component of life on the internet. I have no problem sharing [email protected] with my mother, my family, and friends whom I know and trust. However, I trust no online business. I am unable to prevent what they will do with my account information or whom they will sell it to. Data brokers, online marketing firms, and numerous other business entities pay cash money to online businesses for customer names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, purchase histories, and any other trackable metrics. This results in junk or spam email sent to my email account, unwanted phone calls, unsolicited itemas arriving in my residential mailbox, and other annoying intrusions. I don’t like this modern business practice. So I’ve done something about it.
The Alias
I have used 33mail.com for a couple of years now. They provide a free account to test the waters, but I paid the $12 annual fee for additional premium features. Check out this video to see how 33mail works.
The Username
With 33Mail I created a username that has nothing to do with me. For this illustration, let’s use ’needlepoint’ as my 33Mail username. When I am hungry and crave some Thai food, I’ll visit www.tastythai.com because their restaurant has a location in town near my home and I have enjoyed their food in the past. I trust the folks at Tasty Thai restaurant to not hand me a to-go container of food that will give me an upset tummy. However, I do not trust the third-party ordering service that Tasty Thai uses on their website to receive online orders for pickup or delivery. Let’s use onlinefoodorders.com for this example.
The Signup
When I create an account on Tasty Thai’s website so I can receive an order confirmation, I will use [email protected] as my email address. It looks unusual, but this is a valid email address associated with my 33Mail account. When Tasty Thai receives my online order for pickup, it will send the order confirmation email to [email protected] which automatically forwards to my personal [email protected] account. Onlinefoodorders.com then stores [email protected] in their customer database. Not my personal [email protected] account.
The Value
Once I realized how 33Mail helps me stop having to use my personal email, I changed my other online accounts’ email addresses from [email protected] to a customized 33Mail address:
…and so on.
The Block
33Mail provides this notification box at the top of all their forwarded emails coming into my [email protected] account:
If I receive a ton of emails from the alias ’[email protected]’ I know that onlinefoodorders.com shared my 33Mail address with another business, which is now blasting me with unsolicited emails. To cease future emails from this alias, I click the blue ‘here’ link and 33Mail stops forwarding email from this address for me.
When I get cravings for Thai food in the future, and I want to order from www.tastythai.com I can sign up for another account with ’[email protected]’ as my address. It will still forward me order confirmations to my [email protected] account.
The Alternative
Should you not care for 33Mail and want another email forwarding service to check out, SimpleLogin.io is a highly-regarded solution that I have also used for online websites. You can get a free account to test the waters, but I paid the $30 annual fee for additional premium features. Check out this video to see how SimpleLogin works.
The Message
I believe we should be creating a layer between an online website and our personal email account. With a free email forwarding solution, we can take steps toward protecting our information on the Internet. It helps us also gain a little anonymity on the internet as well.
Thanks very much for your time. I do appreciate it,
— Chris