How you can reclaim control of your email

Drowning in promotional emails? Setting up email aliases and masking can help you regain control of your inbox and protect your privacy

- Abhishek Baxi

A few weeks ago, over a leisurely coffee break while working from home, my wife let out an exasperated sigh as she scrolled through her inbox. "I've signed up for every online offer under the sun... coupons, flash sales, newsletters. Now I'm drowning in junk," she groaned. Every attempt to declutter, like unsubscribing or setting up an email rule, feels like playing whack-a-mole with marketers.

We've all been there. You sign up for a free trial from an online service or enter your email to download a catalogue from a brand's website—sharing your primary email address feels harmless, a small price for convenience. What follows is a digital deluge. You're inundated with promotional emails, unsolicited offers, and a growing trickle of all kinds of suspicious messages. The feeling of being constantly tracked begins to erode your sense of online autonomy.

An email address, once just a communication tool, now is a master key to our entire digital identity. And the seemingly innocuous act of sharing an email for convenience can quickly escalate into significant privacy and security risks. "A single email address is one of many parameters that can be used in attempts to profile people—this is not limited to services to use, as it is common for this information to be exchanged with third parties as well. And from a security perspective, once compromised they could be a gateway to taking over other accounts since email is also used as an additional factor for authentication," explains Prateek Waghre, a technology policy researcher and former executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation.

There are powerful yet simple solutions: the adoption of email aliases and masking to reclaim control and peace of mind.

BEHIND THE MASK