Join us 2026-03-06T22:00:00Z for This Week in Privacy #43, to catch up on the latest Privacy Guides updates and to discuss trending news in the privacy space.
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Firstly, big thanks for all the incredible work that you do!!
In the past I used a single Gmail address (not my main email address) for all sorts of random account sign-ups - for example discord, amazon prime, netflix, industry news websites, one-off trials, newsletters, etc. I’ve used this email address for many, many years. Needless to say, it’s a bit of a cluster tbh. Younger me thought I was being smart not having these accounts fill up my main email address with spam (and to be fair, that was a great decision I made if only for that purpose).
Cut forward to today and being more privacy/security aware, I recently purchased a Proton subscription + custom domain and have begun updating all my old accounts with either Proton/SL aliases or aliases on my custom domain. It’s got me thinking, however, is merely updating my email with a unique alias a waste of time? Should I rather be creating completely new accounts for all these websites? The thinking is that they likely keep version history of my email address so I could still be linked/profiled based on the previous email address? A data breach could also expose the email history, so it doesn’t help in that respect either.
Updating my email with a unique alias on all these websites is one thing, but creating all new accounts (and closing the old ones) gives me goose bumps just thinking about it!
Am I overthinking this? Do I really need to close all my old accounts and create completely new ones with unique aliases? ..or is updating the email with a unique alias on each website enough and I just move on?
I think I already know what your advice would be , but would appreciate your thoughts + any pragmatic suggestions/ options/ solutions
, but would appreciate your thoughts + any pragmatic suggestions/ options/ solutions 