I currently have 326 different Masked Email addresses set in Fastmail. It takes effort but is a powerful way to limit tracking and increase security. 🔒🥸
@jthingelstad wildcard / catchall email addresses are another solution (own a domain and *@example.com goes to one address). What do you find better about masked addresses?
@kitt I used to use that approach as well but have switched things to Fastmail’s masking feature for a couple of wins:
- When you are in the Fastmail app it hides the masked addresses and instead shows you the label you gave. So I can see that company X emailed the address I gave company X very easily.
- A big difference is you can send from masked addresses. So if you wish to you can reply and it comes from that address.
- Final big difference is I can easily “turn off” or “block” any one of the addresses.
Fastmail does all this on my custom domain.
@jthingelstad @kitt I wish Fastmail could offer to create a masked ID when you are registering on a site, like it does for iCloud addresses.
@jsonbecker Ah! Yes. I remember them rolling out that feature. Thanks. Unfortunately, I'm trying to switch over to Apple's Keychain so I can eventually move over to their dedicated app. I do still use 1Password
@jthingelstad I was setting up like 10 aliases in Fastmail, to which I’ve newly subscribed. One for social media, one for shopping, one for family, etc.
It sounds like you’d recommend masked addresses instead? You can’t send from an alias?
I also set it up so I can send from my omg.lol address as a custom domain. I think. I’m not 100% sure I did it correctly. Assuming I did-could I do masked addresses with omg.lol and send from them also?
I’d love to know more about how you stay organized. I’m leaving Gmail and have literally declared email bankruptcy. Hundreds and hundreds of unread messages in my inbox? Insanity. So I’m done.
@pratik you can also do this with your domain. Technical, any email to my domain can hit my inbox. Then I use mail filters/rules to exclude things with certain patterns and I can blackhole an email whenever. My domain is not a secret, but same control if the address gets on lists.
@pratik ultimately though “at point of registration” means being aware of and hijacking the account formation process. Which is natural for a password manager but not an email address, which is why that 1Password integration is great and Apple likely won’t open that up for a while.
@jthingelstad another sensible solution from you to a problem I have and just put up with. I used to have those with Proton mail, but at some point I fell out of habit (it's so easy to just put in the default email).
@jsonbecker Yup. I already use several aliases for different kinds of sites and have set up several filters/rules. Fastmail is pretty awesome for that. But I hear ya about the "being aware of and hijacking the account formation process" that Apple's built-in password-saver will do. Maybe once it has a separate app, that may be next on the to-do list. Until then, 1Password it is.