Instant Alias
Description
Note: available only in mxHero 1.3.0 or better.
Allow email users to create aliases on-the-fly without the need of email system privileges.
This plugin aims to improve personal online security by enabling users to hide their true email address by creating disposable ones, quickly and easily. Today’s Internet often requires users to leave their email address when signing on to new services. The problem is that even if all services could be trusted with personal email addresses, they can be hacked. If a user maintains several email accounts, he is forced to deal with multiple logons. Also, if an email is compromised that is tied to multiple services, it can often be a troublesome process re-registering a new address – if indeed the user can remember all the services that were registered using the compromised email.
Benefits
- Allows users to easily create new aliases on demand, thus preserving anonymity but without risking isolation.
- If a user responds to an email sent to one of his Instant Alias addresses, mxHero will alter the sender address to that of the alias address, thus preserving the alias even during correspondence. (mxHero version 1.3.1 or better)
Example usage
To use Instant Alias, the email user only needs to know the “alias separator” configured by the mxHero admin. With this separator, ex. “-”, the user can create any alias just by appending the separator and arbitrary text to the account portion of his real email address.
Example:
User: paul@domain.com
Alias: paul-paypal@domain.com
Alias: paul-amzn@domain.com
If Paul responds to email sent to paul-paypal@domain.com, the From address will be altered to paul-paypal@domain.com before being delivered.
As a best practice, users can create one alias per service signon. There are no limits to the number of Instant Alias addresses that can be created. If the particular service is compromised or is untrustworthy, the true email is protected and the service specific alias can be blocked without affecting other service aliases.