Here’s my minimal strategy for compartmentalizing my email accounts and minimizing my digital assets:
2 Email Accounts
Account 1: Proton Mail, used for all personal life things (bank, health, insurance, online accounts, flight tickets)
Account 2: Outlook: Professional and Spam Email (I give this on job applications, and use it to accumulate spam from mailing lists and useless accounts)
I need to use Outlook for my job applications (for other reasons), but don’t want Microsoft looking at the spam emails I receive, as they can be telling about my whereabouts (ex. I’m getting spam from Macys, means I went to Macys recently).
Considering using Tutanota just for spam, but that adds to my digital assets. Therefore, it is worth using Tutanota just for spam mail, even though it’s an additional online account I must maintain, but Outlook gets the job done as well?
If I’m not mistaken, the free version of Proton Mail allows for one email filter. Here is what I would do:
Get a SimpleLogin/AnonAddy account
Set a filter in Proton Mail to send any mail from your alias addresses to a certain folder
Give out your alias email address to institutions which you believe will spam you
Depending on the kind of spam you get, this strategy can help you minimize your digital footprint. I bet Outlook also allows you to set up filters. Don’t worry about Tutanota compromising your data, but I understand your concern that 3 email accounts is a lot to manage.
Try using this strategy of setting filters to manage spam. If you are getting too much spam, then it’s time to have a Tutanota account dedicated for spam.
I use an email aliases service, 2 domains and 1 email account.
1 domain for personal/professional, and another one for online accounts with catch-all enabled. Everything has been configured with email filters.
My inbox folders is aleays empty, only spam emails would show up on it that came from the domain that I used for online accounts since catch-all are enabled.
As far as I remember, their free subscription are limited to 3 folders. Yes, its limited to one email filter, but you can put unlimited rules on it. Few years ago I’m able to use unlimited tags and unlimited rules in one email filter, I don’t know about today since I have delete my ProtonMail account.
My system is not minimal, all mail filters to Proton. Outlook is for work, and gmail which I mainly use for changing and deleting old accounts. The only people who I give my Proton Email address to are people with ProtonMail.
Account 1: Protonmail configured with a Curve25519 PGP key.
Anonaddy configured to encrypt to the prior mentioned PGP key.
One alias for each service; however, you may want your bank either on a custom domain or pointing directly to your Proton account.
Use email routing rule to move all emails from spam alias to folder. Or use 10 minute mail/temp email providers for spam.
Account 2: Tutanota. If you are concerned about professionalism and believe tutanota would be viewed negatively (not suggesting this is the case), then use a custom domain linked to tutanota. If you do not wish to use Tutanota then only use outlook for work. Or even better, use outlook as a receive only inbox and reply from another email provider (Protonmail [but not account 1], Tutanota, Self-hosted or Skiff)
Why the services I suggested?
Why not Simplelogin? Proton owns Simplelogin, thus it is advised not to put all your eggs into one basket. Additionally, Anonaddy provides PGP encryption for free, whereas Simplelogin has it as a paid feature.
Outlook, no elaboration required.
You may want to use Skiff instead of Tutanota; however, please note that Skiff is not fully open source yet (although some non-bleeding edge code is available on Github). Additionally, in my own opinion Skiff has not proven it self yet; regarding profitability, longevity, privacy or transparency.