Want to get communities thoughts on using an alias email address (ex. SimpleLogin, AnonAddy) for things like banking, finance, government, and employment.
To be honest, I highly trust my AnonAddy alias with my banking and financial accounts. I’d be comfortable using AnonAddy for these purposes. Only concern - if AnonAddy shuts down, I might be cooked. I don’t think SimpleLogin will shut down anytime in the near future.
Employment - I’m fine with using an alias for my employer’s payroll software (another data collection mechanism). But, I’m hesitant to use an alias on employment applications. Although it could come off as unprofessional, I also don’t want to give out my Proton Mail address on job boards (or else it’s getting spammed). Maybe Gmail isn’t a bad option for job hunting (I use Proton and Tuta for other aspects of my life).
At my current job, my interviewer had suspicions of my Proton Mail address. I still got the job, and he jokingly said he associates Proton Mail with hackers and scammers. I quickly countered saying hackers and scammers also use Gmail. And, my interviewer was a university technical student. I guess that’s how my generation views privacy respecting services.
So yes, I’m comfortable with using an alias email address for any part of my life, except for professional circumstances. I don’t want my Proton Mail or Tutanota email to get spammed.
Realize that the email alias might save some of my data, but I can’t really alias my phone number. (Most services won’t take VOIP/Google Voice numbers, and I don’t have the money to buy a second sim card). I use those temporary phone number sites for stupid things, but for actually important things, I’ve got to use my real number.
My main strategy for dealing with spam is simply having a way of quickly filtering it out based on which account it arrives in.
As far as I can tell, you will get spam eventually. Even if they have to guess email addresses and test which are valid. So I’m far more concerned with how well it can be filtered out than preventing it.
I rarely get any sort of email spam though. They tend to target phone numbers instead, so I’m slowly switching important stuff to a “clean” number.
I personally insist on a dedicated account for financial stuff. Mostly to filter out anything that isn’t explicitly from a bank or insurance.
My “professional” email is just a former personal email address. The only “spam” it gets is LinkedIn updates despite having used it for a few years now to deal with anything professional outside of my actual work.
Using a generated alias for the Job Search itself is something I might consider these days, but some people will view it as unprofessional, since it’s intentionally random. Including myself years back.
I’m less ignorant now, but whichever HR person it passes through first might not be.
A safer option might be using the older variant of aliasing where one account can have multiple linked addresses.
I believe Protonmail premium, Outlook and iCloud all support this. (Not that Outlook is any better for privacy than Gmail).
Alternatively, an account you treat as disposable.
I think you should, because it allows you to have a hidden private email, for your confidential services. It will go to your primary inbox, but unable to be attacked without knowing the ‘secret’ email. In this case it is useful inxthat it is a different email that isn’t public; maxing it harderxto hack you, but with the ease of it still going to your normal(if you use proton) inbox.
I personally use aliases for banking, health related services, online shops, academic and professional accounts, and government related ones.
So it’s basically what you described except I added health and online shops.
The reasons I did this are :
Sorting mails work better with aliases routed to specific folders rather than traditionnal filters (at least in my experience and with the client I’m using for all this stuff).
If there is a data breach (and the main email related to these aliases actually suffered from 8 different data breaches since 2008 according to Have I Been Pwned, including 4 just last year), at least it’s localized to only one area of your life and since you might not have the same data stored everywhere, you will reveal less information.
My main email was my first and last name, so with aliases I could at least hide it a little to have extra privacy/safety.
I think this is a healthy strategy that is not too difficult to set up. I’ll probably set something similar for my parents and my sister to help them sort out their mails better (and reduce spam a little since it also helps in that regard).
I also use Proton on the side with nothing related to my real name, and also use aliases to sort out mails as well as having throwable aliases for one shot accounts, but that’s outside the scope of your question.
I would get a domain that looks somewhat legit for all use cases that are important to you + are linked to your real identity anyways for example: banking, job related stuff, government stuff, …
Another benefit of having your own domain with SimpleLogin is portability. If that service ever goes away, just update your DNS to point to a new service.