The most common example of the abstract concept of online privacy is the decision that we make about how we use our e-mail address when signing up for websites, applications and on-line services. In the end, a typical person’s one e-mail account can be connected to over fifty (or more) other sites and/or applications which are likely to have been forgotten. A number of these connections have recently made this practice appear weak due to the growing number of data breaches, phishing campaigns, etc. With the emergence of disposable email addresses, the idea of disposable email addresses is a reflection of a movement toward a more private experience of using the Internet.
For decades, we have treated e-mail addresses as low-risk identifiers. We have provided them to news outlets, to forums, to download centers, to services, and so forth, and rarely thought about their long-term implications. But today, we treat e-mail addresses as persistent digital identifiers; these identifiers link together your online identities, activities, and historical experiences. With growing interest in privacy issues, we are now scrutinizing how this function serves us.There are several reasons why widespread exposure of our information occurs. Data breaches are becoming less rare. Large data breaches make headlines while those which occur at smaller companies and/or niche platforms frequently go unreported. Additionally, when you expose an e-mail address in one breach, it is rapidly aggregated and resold to other parties who will create additional profiles about you. These profiles are very valuable to advertisers and extremely appealing to hackers. Many modern phishing attacks also utilize this “context” to help their phony messages appear to be authentic.
Using One E-Mail Address Across All Services Does Not Protect Your Privacy
Using a single e-mail address for registration across dozens of completely unrelated services increases your risk. Any social networking site, any shopping site, newsletter service, and/or experimental app are connected to each other by way of one e-mail address. After exposing your e-mail address, you will find it very difficult to discontinue using that e-mail address without disrupting communications that may be critical to your daily life. Therefore, for those of you concerned with your own privacy, this model of using a single e-mail address everywhere is becoming increasingly obsolete and weak.
Temporary/Disposable E-Mails Offer A Different Model
Temporary/disposable e-mails provide a model that allows for separation of your online activities. You can use disposable e-mails to register for services where you don’t need to continue communicating (i.e., to register for gated articles, to join a forum, to test a new service, or to take advantage of a promotion). If your temporary/disposable e-mail is subsequently targeted by spammers or leaked into another breach, then the damage is contained to that particular transaction.
The idea of creating and using a new email for every online transaction aligns with current practices to protect user privacy. Many people today use password generators to create unique passwords for each website they visit, their browsers separate the user’s session on a website from other websites by isolating them (this is called “session isolation”), devices are used to keep a user’s work life separate from their private life, and disposable email accounts provide the same type of separation for communications.
Disposable email addresses do not attempt to provide complete anonymity to a user, but rather help prevent the linking of information that can be used to identify a person. Disposable email addresses break a possible chain of identifiable data that could potentially follow a user after a single event, and before the chain has formed into something identifiable.
Advantages to Using Disposable Email Addresses to Improve Security
Disposable email addresses improve a user’s security in several ways. One way is that many phishing scams target primary email addresses that users check regularly and trust. Users rarely monitor disposable email addresses long enough to receive and respond to malicious emails; therefore, disposable email addresses remove an entire category of social engineering risks. Malicious emails may still be received by users who have created disposable email addresses, but these users will likely ignore the email since the address is no longer associated with them.
Economic Advantages to Creating Disposable Emails
Disposable email addresses limit the amount of data that can be collected about a user. Since disposable email addresses expire shortly after creation, there is little or no monetary incentive to collect the data contained within. In addition, disposable email addresses make it difficult to create persistent profiles that contain information about a user over time. While disposable email addresses will not completely eliminate the ability of companies to collect data about users, it makes collecting data about a user less valuable and less likely to happen.
Accessibility of Disposable Email Accounts
As users outside of the tech community begin to realize how important protecting their identity is, disposable email services have begun to become more accessible. For example, Evap Mail provides a simple method to create disposable email addresses for users without having to register or give up any personal information. Disposable email services need to be accessible so that users can easily use them to protect themselves without needing advanced computer skills or changing their routine significantly.
Disposable Emails for Less Than Ideal Situations
Disposable email does not suit every use case. Stable email addresses and reliable recovery processes continue to be required by financial services, work platforms, and critical account holders. Selective (not absolute) is what privacy-minded individuals must do when determining when an email address should remain permanent versus when it will increase exposure.
Significant Change Through a Modest Adjustment
Disposable email addresses are becoming increasingly popular because of how they represent a fundamental paradigm shift in how individuals view and utilize their own privacy. Rather than relying solely on trust or legal protections, individuals are altering structural elements in order to mitigate their own risk. While the utilization of disposable email addresses to alter how email addresses are utilized may seem like a small change, it creates a break in long term linkability, diminishes the impact of breaches, and makes mass targeted advertising less effective.As consumers make the Internet more privacy conscious; there is no reason why convenience and protection need to be mutually exclusive. As such, disposable email addresses show that minor alterations to daily behavior can lead to substantive improvements in digital resiliency. Over time, this type of behavior is expected to become normative rather than the exception as consumers begin to self-regulate the amount of themselves that they expose online.
