Your email address is like your digital passport, a unique identifier for all the services you use online. But unlike a real passport, your email address is often publicly available for anyone to send you malware, bombard you with spam, or track your behavior.
Today we’re introducing a new way to protect your identity, control spam, and prevent phishing with hide-my-email aliases in Proton Mail. These are unique, randomly generated email addresses you can give out instead of your real email address, which stays private. Additionally, hide-my-email aliases are already available in Proton Pass.
You can create up to 10 hide-my-email aliases with the Proton Free plan, or upgrade to Proton Unlimited to create as many as you need. You’ll find your hide-my-email aliases in our new Security Center in Proton Mail.
Read below to learn more about this new privacy feature and situations where you might want to use it.
A simple way to keep your email address private
If you use the same email address for every account, you’re putting your online identity at risk. Most online services are vulnerable to cyberattacks, and hackers are becoming more relentless. Once your email address is in the wild, it can be added to spam lists or sold to marketers. You could also be targeted with spear phishing(new window) attacks.
Hide-my-email aliases are unique, randomly generated email addresses you can provide instead of your real email address. You can receive emails to these aliases within your Proton Mail account and reply without revealing your identity.
Unlike your primary email address, you can easily deactivate aliases if they’re ever revealed in a data breach or start receiving spam.
- Online purchases: Companies love to build a profile of you based on your spending habits. Providing an email alias protects you from being profiled and targeted.
- Account creation: Whenever you create an account for an online service, you can provide a hide-my-email alias to avoid being tracked or attacked by hackers after a data breach.
- Newsletters: Email aliases make it much easier to unsubscribe from newsletters you no longer want (or never wanted in the first place). Simply deactivate the alias.
Plus, aliases help you organize your inbox. You can filter, sort, and label emails sent to your aliases in specific folders.
How to use hide-my-email aliases
It’s easy to create and use email aliases in Proton Mail:
- Create a Proton Mail account if you don’t already have one.
- Look for the new shield icon on the right side panel of the Proton Mail web app(new window). This is your new Security Center, where you’ll find your hide-my-email aliases.
- Create hide-my-email aliases with a single click. Once created, your new alias is automatically placed in your clipboard and ready to share.
You can also generate email addresses instantly when creating new online accounts using Proton Pass. Visit our Pass email aliases page to learn more.
Fight online security threats, starting with your inbox
The new Security Center is the home of hide-my-email aliases, but it doesn’t stop there. It’s also where you can take simple steps to secure your account, whether it’s setting up two-factor authentication or a recovery phrase. And the Security Center gives you instant access to our Proton Sentinel(new window) account protection program, which monitors for suspicious account activity and blocks account takeover attacks.
Since Proton is 100% funded by our community, we prioritize your security and privacy above all. This new addition to Proton Mail is another step toward giving you total control over your email and building a future where privacy is the default.
