The golden nugget of value here is that we do not have a resilient, independent email alias system.
Beyond the complaint about lack of goodwill (free service) from Proton, OP exposes larger concerns.
- What if Proton went out of business?
- What if the (alias) domains land on the “blocked” list so many companies no longer accept them?
Changing your primary email is bad enough: changing thousands of aliases adds an additional manual step to that process (1. finding the correct alias for the account 2. generating a new alias to replace it).
I signed up for Proton and SimpleLogin to replace Sneakemail, because many sites no longer accept Sneakemail email domains (blocked as “throwaway” addresses). I am struggling through this process now and it absolutely sucks.
I am using my own domain, but OP correctly points out that you lose anonymity/privacy since all your email aliases can be tied to you in aggregate. Even if I used 10 domains it would still break anonymity.
Right now there’s no way out, as long as email remains the ubiquitous identification/communication pathway.
OP is right, cost for the alias itself is trivial, but we all agree there must be a management and handling infrastructure that does have a non-trivial cost.
I’d love to see a discussion about ways around the problem that maintain privacy and durable access independent of the control of others. Some combination of self-hosting, domain sharing, federated services, and open access. I’m thinking like TOR or Debrid style but for email and aliases.
I’d donate to an open project that created and maintained the infrastructure that solved these problems. Sounds like one Privacy Guides should take on!