Disguised Emails

In iOS 15, Apple introduced Hide My Email for users with an iCloud+ Subscription. This lets users generate a random email address that forwards to their inbox.

This is an incredibly useful service with a couple of benefits:

Security

If we generate a random email address for each account, it reduces the chances of a hacker guessing the email address part of the login. This makes it harder to hack an account through brute force (though not as difficult as using two factor authentication).

This is particularly useful in the case that your email address is quite guessable (e.g. firstname.surname@icloud.com).

A side benefit of generating random email addresses for each account is that we can trace the source of spam and other unwanted email. If we’ve only used an email once, we know where an email was leaked or sold from.

Privacy

Email isn’t just a personal identifier, it’s a direct line to contact you. In fact, it’s the most direct way to contact people aside from a phone number or address.

Disguising our email address also solves one of the biggest privacy issues with newsletters: many mailing list providers make it incredibly easy for list owners to spy on individual users.

Masking an email address is a way to buy back some privacy. This is useful in all sorts of situations: perhaps we don’t trust a service or there’s a reason that using our actual email address could expose us to a risk.

Disguising our email address also solves one of the biggest privacy issues with newsletters: many mailing list providers make it incredibly easy for list owners to spy on individual users.

List owners can often see:

• How many times an individual opens an email
• What days and times they opened it
• In some cases, where they were when they opened it

Many users are completely unaware this data is collected. Aside from this being a gross invasion of privacy and trust, the fact it’s tied to an email address (a way to identify and contact that individual) makes it all the weirder.

Disguising our email addresses gives us more control of our privacy.

Fastmail + 1Password

For Fastmail and 1Password users, there’s an integration that makes this even easier. Their Masked Email service automatically generates forwarding email addresses, a password and saves it for you.

If you’re not a Fastmail user already and want to use an affiliate link, here you go.

Update: 27th November, 2021: I recently discovered Simple Login which offers this service independently. Worth checking out if you’re not an iCloud or Fastmail user.

The future of email?

These services are making it easier than ever to create disguised email addresses, which is a great thing for privacy and security. I’ve already seen masked emails in use in mailing lists I run, and I’d love to see this more widely used.

It always takes a while for features like this to be adopted, especially given the extra friction it creates in signing up. But it would be wonderful if this became the de facto method for creating new accounts.

We live in hope.