This might not be the best place to ask, but here goes:
I am trying to revamp my email strategy and regain some privacy in the process, as my previous popular email service provider accounts have become untrustworthy after many years.
Thinking about moving to a new email service(proton?) and using an aliasing service(SimpleLogin?).
Q: am I being too paranoid, could I simplify this?
—————
My email strategy going forward:
3 custom domains:
known identity : x @known .com
- contact with banks, govt, etc
business 1 : x @biz1 .com
- contact with clients
business 2: x @ biz2. com
- contact w/ clients
———
NOW, I want to use aliases for my accounts but don’t want to use my own domains for this purpose as I don’t want to let services have this info.
—
SO, I would create 5 xtra mail addresses that would handle all the logins and services which in turn forward to my own domains.
——
X,x2,y,z,s @ mail. com
Which each would use aliases.
SKETCH:
— x
— known
— contact
— x @ known. com
— service
— x @ mail. com (forward to @ known)
— biz 1 & 2
— contact
— y @ biz. com
— service
— y @ mail .com(forward to @biz)
— unknown identity
—Service
—important
— z @ mail.com
—not important
— alias (forward to z @ mail)
— rsvp/xtra/temp
— Alias => s @ mail.com
I’m not sure if I really understand your setup, but I’ll tell you what I use/recommend:
1 Proton mailbox, no aliases or custom domains in Proton
Custom domains added to SimpleLogin account:
known.com in SimpleLogin
Bank 1 gets [random alias x]@known.com
Bank 2 gets [random alias y]@known.com
Govt 1 gets [random alias z]@known.com
Any service you really care about gets [random alias]@known.com basically
etc.
biz1.com in SimpleLogin
[Random alias]@biz1.com for each internet service Biz 1 uses
One alias with a good name (or a catch all) @biz1.com to hand out to clients
biz2.com in SimpleLogin
Same setup
SimpleLogin’s alias domains
[random alias]@[random domain] for internet services you don’t care about
All these aliases get forwarded to the single Proton mailbox, which has an email address that you never hand out. And you can use filters to organize them by folder based on domain or whatever you want.
(This assumes you want a single mailbox, if you want separate mailboxes for biz1/biz2 you could do that as well I suppose)
Thanks for your reply and tips! That was my first plan : )
However I’d like to disassociate my custom domains from the services since the businesses etc are linked to being a public figure.
.
The accounts have been breached in the past, having the company name
in the email address connected to a service would be a future inconvenience.
.
Therefore I thought it would help if I had a protonmail address (with an alias per account) foreach custom domain address, so they just forward.
.
SO: Service => alias => x @ proton . Tld => x @ ownDomain .tld
The jump to a proton domain address before going to your own custom domain address seems a little pointless if you’ll be using proton to manage your mail anyways, no? If an account was breached, I don’t see how the extra hop could prevent anything from being found out that wasn’t hidden without it.
That’s a valid point. Some services, seem to limit functionality or downright block the account if it thinks the user’s email is spam by using an alias account, setting in motion a whole ordeal of proving your identity not being a bot defeating the whole purpose.
.
Therefore I thought It’d be great having x@protonmail. Com to subscribe to services as it would still allow me to use these services whilst keeping my domain off their servers.
.
Fav solution would be:
Alias@alias. Tld => x @ownDomain . Com
My setup is I self-host SimpleLogin (an open source email alias tool), you can also pay $36/yr for it too
But it gives you a chrome extension, iOS app, etc. and all the emails would forward to your main. It’s nice because you would have an email that’s “facebook.3sdfj@simplelogin.io”
You can have a separate alias for each service (which is what I do) and it helps me figure out which services are sharing my email broadly and where is my spam coming from (Ticketmaster was a culprit, a surprising one was MBA programs, they sell your application email to other universities)
Thank you for sharing your use case. Do you still have the same use case? If yes, let me ask you 10 questions.
Do you have Proton Unlimited or Business Suite subscription?
Does proton mailbox have generic name?
Are all Simple Login redirections automatically PGP encrypted in your Proton account?
Do you recommend getting a separate Simple Login subscription or just use from from Proton Unlimited / Business Suite subscription? Which option is future proof?
Do you recommend only Proton Mail service with the best Simple Login integration?
Do you change any Simple Login default settings? If yes, which ones?
Can you suggest an example how random and good name alias looks like?
How would you set up to reply from these Simple Login alises?
What is known.com domain? Do you recommend generic domain or something like first / last .com ?
Would you recommend having different services under one Proton umbrella?