Let us count “either you are a man or a woman” as one of the assumptions people make online then. Vast majority of people will default to seeing a person as one of those and treat them accordingly.
If one is concerned about privacy or external treatment then such a person will have this in mind, regardless of how they self identify.
But it’s changing, we are moving away from such prejudices, I don’t treat people on here differently based on my assumptions about gender, largely because I’m very aware that most people are posting under aliases but also because it’s crude and old-fashioned.
Well, I was under the impression that Addy didn’t let you have any variety to your aliases other than choosing which domain you want to use, but I was clearly wrong about that, and you taught me otherwise.
That being said, I find that Proton Pass still gives you more flexibility because I can choose my alias before it is created, meaning that if I don’t like any of the suffixes proposed to me, I can simply ask for new ones by closing the alias window and clicking create item > Alias again.
Here’s the screenshot of what it looks like.
All the aliases that you see are suggested. They haven’t been created yet. It’s kind of like checking for the availability of a username before confirming that you want it. On Addy, there is no way to find out what an alias will look like before you create it, which can be annoying if you don’t like it.
Proton also lets me create my own prefixes, which is only an option on Addy if you choose *“cutstom”* but then Addy adds five random characters at the end that can make your email look weird if you want to appear professional. Especially if the random characters contain letters.
Proton Mail doesn’t let you check the availability of additional emails
Earlier I used the analogy of finding out if a username is available before creating it to explain how aliases work with Proton Pass. What I find ironic is that unlike Tuta Mail, Proton Mail does not let you check the availability of additional addresses before you create them.
We may have made a lot of progress as a society, but we are so far from a world where people are no longer judgemental about gender, ethnicity, nationality, disability, etc… Even the most educated, empathetic person has biases because we all do.
Hence why I like using gender neutral names. I have also noticed that when I have a username that doesn’t suggest any gender (GreenFrog), people on the internet will make assumptions about me and refer to me by a gendered pronoun. Most of the time, unless you are in a very feminine space (e.g.: ovarian cancer survivors group), people will assume you’re male, even though they’ve had no indication of such.
Apple’s Private Email Relay probably deserves some credit here too. One thing I really like about it is that, for addresses created through Sign in with Apple, only the app or website’s registered email sources can successfully send mail through the relay. So if the vendor gets breached, or more commonly decides to share/sell your data to third parties, those third parties can’t simply start emailing that relay address or use it for profiling across services
I see that’s the equivalent of addy’s custom option and, although I don’t really use that option I can see it’s pretty cool to be presented with a preview of alternative aliases.
My favourite way of making a new alias is using the addy tool which can be added to the settings panel. Click on it and a new aliases is created and copied to the clipboard. It’s great not having to leave the app you are registering with to get the new alias.
