Protect Your Resources with Email Aliases

Gone are the days of having a single email and thinking it's safe to be giving it to every single person and service you sign up for. Those of us who were grew up with internet as teenagers learned the hard way that only having a single email address means that ending up hacked or compromised was too easy. Me having free G--gle email is what made my cyber-stalking so easy because it was tied in with my google maps, all the apps I used, etc! I had to learn about this new way of protecting myself, implement and test it, and now I'm sharing my findings and suggestions with you all!

Now, the best method for keeping yourself safe is a layered method- Having an email for professional purposes, a different one for casual friend/family contact, another one for using to sign up for social media platforms, another one for signing up for coupons/spam, and a top secret one that you use for your high priority services, banking, etc. This sounds like a lot of emails to juggle, and you would be correct if you were using random free email services, but you don't have to actually HAVE that many email addresses to log into separately. You can have a singular master email (that you give to no one) and "aliases" instead! You don't have to log in to a million different mailboxes, they just all function as a singular inbox and you have 10 "aliases" that redirect to that main secret inbox.

These layers keep you, your data, and all of your critical services safe from hackers AND make it reeeeally obvious to you when you start receiving fake password resets or phishing attempts to emails that aren't even associated with the services they're trying to trick you into thinking are sending the phishing emails. (Which makes avoiding phishing a no brainer!)

This type of alias setup is available through a Swiss encrypted email provider named Proton Mail for less than a cup of coffee a month. This company encrypts your data, meaning nobody can spy on it, and values privacy over selling your data and housing it in warehouses... unlike the free variety of email that we have all unfortunately given faaaar far too much of our data to already (remember, if something is free YOU are the product). I for one am disgusted at the amount of data I willingly gave away for free without knowing, and I will no longer be playing into having my data harvested anymore. As much as I don't like paying for services, an encrypted email that will not sell or give my data to anyone AND keeps me safe from hackers with aliases is absolutely worth having.

If you value your privacy and want to set up a multi-layered, privacy conscious, encrypted and spy proof email system- switching to Proton Mail is the way to go! Signing up for the lowest tier email also grants you access to a VPN that ALSO covers your IPv6 (which free VPNs don't do, they only mask IPv4 - this leaves you open to phishing, hacking, stalking still.)

Click here to check out Proton Mail // They also offer online Drive services! // And a VPN that actually covers IPv6

(After successfully using Proton email and VPN services as part of a handful of tools to escape cyber-stalking, and proving that they do in fact keep me safe afterward, I reached out to Proton and became affiliated so I'd receive a small kick back at no cost to you if you sign up. Before I ever did that - these opinions had been truthfully formed from personal experience using their products for years. Free products of ANY kind aren't safe and never have been, "data warehouses" are full of your data if you use them- encryption and aliases are the only rational way forward as AI makes hacking easier and easier every day. I hope this information informs and helps you whether you decide to use Proton or not!)

Step 4: Creating Protective Email Layers with Aliases