Mail Masking

What is Mail Masking?

Email masking is a way to hide your real email address by using a generic, non-identifiable “masked” address. This allows you to send and receive emails without revealing your true email, protecting your personal information and identity.

For example, you can create a masked email address like “[email protected]” and use it whenever a website asks for your email. This way, your real email stays hidden, keeping you safe from threats like phishing attacks, financial scams, and data breaches.

Email masking is a form of data masking, which protects sensitive information from unauthorized access. While many services offer data masking for passwords, it’s also important to protect your email address to reduce the risks associated with sharing it online.

Goals of Mail Masking:

• Protect your email address from spam and phishing attacks
• Keep your email address private & secure
• Protect your logins by using a unique email address for each service
• Keep your inbox clean and organized

Mail Masking is a technique that allows you to create unique email addresses for each service you use. This way, you can keep your primary email address private and secure, while still receiving important emails from different services.

TIP

As attackers do not even know your login name this makes you an even lesser attractive target. Also attackers consider economic rules and if attacking is more expensive than the expected reward they rather stop the attack.

In which situations it can help you?

1. You like to go to concerts and you have an account at ticketmaster. In June 2024 ticketmaster was hacked and customer data was stolen. Data like this is very likely to be sold in the dark net and customers need to be careful. Especially, the mail addresses are easy to use for sending spam or to send phishing and gather more information about you.
   Benefit: If the service is hacked and your information is leaked you can just deactivate the alias to not receive spam or phishing. And of course change the mail and the password for this service. Also be aware that this is the reason why you should not use the same password for different services.
2. At an event you are asked for your mail address and you don’t want to give your real name or your real mail address.
   Benefit: So you just give them the the name, e.g. “James Bond” and the mail james.bond@[your domain] to keep your information protected without being unpolite.
3. You want to channel mails and distribute it to different mail addresses. E.g. you have a mail address for your family or for you and your partner. Benefit: You can use one alias together to distribute the mails to different mail addresses.