On my post talking about the advantages of using a password tracker (here), I mentioned that I generate a private email address for every site I sign up for. I think doing this is pretty much essential for privacy these days. Let's talk about it a bit.

There are two big problems to email these days. Well three, the major one being that it is a completely unencrypted format and is not secure in any way whatsoever, but we can't really tackle that problem easily so we're going to skip it for the moment. The two major problems we are going to consider are

1. When you always use the same email address, that gives websites another avenue to track you across the internet
2. These days almost all emails you receive contain trackers that phone home to the company that sent the email, telling them things like when you checked the mail, how many times you read it, if you forwarded it to anyone, if you deleted it, etc.

Needless to say, both of these things are bad.

Luckily both of these can be solved by a service from DuckDuckGo that generates as many email addresses as you want, strips all trackers from emails sent to these addresses, then forwards the tracker-less email to you.

Other companies do offer similar services. Apple gives the same thing to anyone who pays or an iCloud account. Proton mail also gives the same option to paid customers. DuckDuckGo both makes this service easier to use than both of the above and they make it free.

Go here to sign up for the service. If that doesn't work, go to the main DuckDuckGo page, click on the three lines icon at the top right, then scroll down to "Email Protection".

Once you sign up, you can return to this page at any time to generate a new protected email address.

Or, even better, install the DuckDuckGo extension/plugin for your browser (they have both Firefox and Chrome/Brave versions) and click on it to instantly generate a new address even easier!

This extension will actually see when a textbox wants an email address and they will even suggest generating a new address right there, so you don't even need to click into the extension. Wow! This really is a lazy man's extension.

As you can see in that photo, it actually gives you two options. You can use the default address that DuckDuckGo gives you when you sign up for this service (I redacted mine so you can't see it). This one will block all trackers. Or you can generate a new address that will block trackers and hide your real email address. I recommend the latter. Using the default one still leaves us with problem #1 that I list above, that is that sites can track you easier if you always use the same email address.

The one danger to using this service is that you need to trust DuckDuckGo not to be evil. So far they have been a good company for the past 15 years, but as we know too well with Google, companies can change from not evil to evil quickly. The second problem is that if in the future DuckDuckGo either dies as a company or terminates this service, we lose all access to all the emails we have created with this service.

I'd say while both or those problems are things to be concerned about, the advantage of using these private emails outweighs the disadvantages.

If you agree, go sign up.

❦

David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.