5 Tools to Protect Your Email Address From Websites and Newsletters

It is important to hide your email address from various third-party applications and web services.

You create free accounts with some seemingly cool web service or subscribe to newsletters. This is the general practice and that’s what most people do.

But imagine if there is a database breach on the web or newsletter service. Your email address is exposed to all kinds of scammers and spammers. Such email databases are sold on the dark web all the time.

In some cases, spurious websites also collect email addresses just to send spam messages.

You are no stranger to spam, are you?

Now, some people have dedicated email addresses for these kinds of random, non-work, unimportant emails. But there are better ways to prevent spam emails.

You can use specialized tools that give you dummy email addresses to share with third parties. Emails coming to these dummy addresses are forwarded to your actual email address. Your actual email address is not exposed here (except to the tool you are using).

Do you want to stop receiving emails from certain sources? You can block it even before it reaches your inbox.

Here, I focus on listing some of the most interesting open-source tools that provide email aliases to help hide your real email address

In case you’re looking for more privacy tools (browsers, VPN, messaging, etc.): refer to our list of easy privacy tools to enhance your digital experience.

1. SimpleLogin by Proton

SimpleLogin during its initial launch days.

Since then, a lot has changed, and it is now a part of Proton. In case you’re curious, ProtonMail rebranded to Proton earlier this year.

The one thing that stands out here: if you already have a paid ProtonMail account, you can use SimpleLogin premium for free.

It is an open-source anonymous email solution that lets you generate email aliases for free.

The free plan is limited to 10 aliases (unlimited bandwidth) and one mailbox. So, if you want unlimited aliases, and the ability to add more email addresses for protection, you can opt for its premium plans that cost $30 per year.

You get access to the service through the web, a browser extension, and mobile apps (Android and iOS).

Additionally, you can self-host it for total control of the email aliases and get the ability to customize your experience with it.

2. Firefox Relay

use Firefox as your web browser if you opt to use Firefox Relay for seamless integration.

In either case, you can also use Firefox Relay on Chromium-based browsers like Brave and Vivaldi. Explore the differences between them in our Brave vs Vivaldi comparison article.

You will be limited to five email aliases for free. If you want a couple of email aliases, have them redirect to your inbox, it should be a good option.

Note that you will not be getting access to any mobile apps here. So, you can only access it using the mobile web browser or the desktop browser extension.