I use mostly just DuckDuckGo, mostly because it’s free. That said, if I were to pay for an aliasing service it would be Addy.io, mostly because of all the additional features (like the tracker removal they just added), because you can create more than one alias per service and because they are cool and independent. Not really a fan of SimpleLogin’s acquisition by Proton, mostly because the latter is an ecosystem company which I personally think is a bad thing because the choice of other services you use should be independent (or at least depend on the kinds of integrations that are available). Good thing we have options I guess.
That said, I would like to see some innovation, preferably from Addy.io, in terms of the guarantees that it will stay around for the long term (something like enforceable terms, binding corporate rules etc.), stay independent and run in a way that aligns with the interests of a the privacy community. Given the enormous lock-in effects of an email aliasing service (unless you use your own domain) that’s quite important.
Similarly, it would be nice if users would have some guarantees that prices would not rise in the future for existing subscribers, features become gatekept or nerfed or that the service will not enshittify.
Maybe some day Mozilla or some other public interest organization will come around and realize the importance of providing a long-term public interest email aliasing service (even if freemium or even premium) that would be run in the interest of the wider internet community. Or a new community could form and just use the open-source Addy.io code with their own domains I guess. Probably wouldn’t cost that much to run anyway, getting reliable long-term stewards seems like the much harder part.
Tracking seems to be the easy part. The hard part is making it usable for something, like email filtering. I thought about scripting a conversion of the address list into Proton/Gmail/Thunderbird filters syntax, but it wouldn’t be very convenient, since the user has to manually paste the result into the Gmail/Proton filters. So I ended up grouping aliases in the cloud and using that to sort emails via Cloudflare.
I wish Tuta and other email clients provided native integrations to allow sending from these email addresses as well.
Sounds like a job for your automation tool of choice, like Alfred, Raycast, Hammerspoon, etc. Select the email, convert the string into DuckDuckGo’s sending format, paste. Do you use Raycast? As I remember, it would literally be a one-liner there.
Thank you so much! An on-off switch for an alias like DuckDuckGo has in their password manager probably makes more sense than letting a user delete it from the list outright, an action that should maybe be more hidden in a dropdown menu or be accompanied by a warning to prevent accidental removal.
Just an idea, maybe there should be an easy way to add a single existing alias to the list of addresses as this would make it easy for the user to reactive an email address they have previously deactivated and is not already included in Qwacky.
Sorry, that came out wrong. I meant to say that DuckDuckGo does not support it natively which is a bit of a bummer since it can make it harder to track what all email aliases are used for, in case you need to switch them out for some other service in the future, or just want to keep the list clean of accidentally generated and unused aliases[1]. But I guess this is also a Bitwarden limitation as well since it doesn’t support such labeling even for services that do support it.
Sadly quite easy to do this now unless you always you use Qwacky, whereas assigning a label makes it much more intentional. ↩︎
Interesting thinking, @Sorge. Personally I approach email as a to-do list and don’t do much filtering but then again I also don’t find my inbox overwhelming like it is for most people. I have been thinking of creating an email aliasing service of sorts for my own website when people try to contact me, so that I give everyone a unique email address where they can contact me, as an additional spam precaution and to try and achieve my goal of using email aliasing not just with respect to services and institutions but also regular people[1].
Probably something I need to add to my workflow eventually but just not something I’ve had a ton of need for so far. What I’m more looking for is deeper integration into regular email clients and contacts store services, where I think there’s still a gap that has not been filled yet. For instance the contacts app would track which email address I handed out to whom, and whenever I would message them, my email would always come from that email address.
Would make sense for Tuta to integrate with Addy.io in order to better compete with Proton Mail I guess, especially given their existing partnership. They also already have an encrypted store that sync to the iOS and Android contact stores, but sadly not on desktop. I do need to check out Peergos again since I saw that they added CalDAV and CardDAV support to their macOS app recently.
I’ve become increasingly concerned over how my data is handled when it is in control of normies who don’t know any better but to share my address with whomever and upload it to whatever service. I’ve restricted handing out my phone number to very few people, email aliasing is the next step. ↩︎
Good news, I looked into it and turning aliases on and off is possible, so I’ll add it in the next update. I’ll also keep your other suggestions in mind, thanks!
Oh, aliases themselves are a very niche thing, and how people use them is even more niche and fragmented. I never thought about this usage of aliases, as probably most people don’t feel the pain of filtering forwarded emails.
The thing you’re talking about is totally doable with DDG and other aliases with open API: you place a “show email” link, on click it requests and shows an alias address, either by calling the API or by using a pool of already generated addresses (I’d probably end up with the latter so users don’t have to wait too long). Sounds like a fun little thing.
Yeah, that is one set-up I have considered and it’s probably very easy to implement but with professional contacts I want to rely less on DuckDuckGo’s service in case they shut it down in the future. Emailing tons of professional contacts and telling them to switch out my email address is not exactly workable and a great way to annoy them. Plus since I already have a *.is-a.dev domain name, I would prefer to just use that since it’s more professional (and makes a better impression) than @duck.com, I think. Also it would be an excuse to finally checkout other solutions that support custom domain names, like https://forwardemail.net/.
I have dozens of pages of notes on email aliasing and this conversation reminds me there’s still a lot more to think about in the future. This part of internet infrastructure is sadly pretty broken, though I am working on a concept solution that would try and fix all these communication identifiers.
See my comment here and replies to it. It looks like Qwacky will be gaining support reactivating email aliases soon. Until then, if you can’t find any email messages tied to the email alias you want to reactivate, what I think you can do is download the DuckDuckGo Android, MacOS or iOS app, sign in with your DuckDuckGo account, go to the built-in password manager and paste the email alias and then reactivate it from there.
I have been watching the forums for some time but created an account specifically for this post.
I am the mobile app developer for addy.io and have worked closely with Will over the past couple of years including behind the scenes.
I handle a little bit more than just mobile development actually. I am also becoming increasingly involved in decisions and changes to the platform and APIs, and major choices pass through me for a soft approval to make sure it makes sense and improves the service in a good way.
We are discussing my deeper involvement in the project, along with a way to ensure knowledge and know-how are not lost if someone cannot continue development for any reason.
This exactly is why I never have bothered trying it out. Enforcing users to install a browser extension just to create email aliases does not make any sense in my view:
Security: It weakens browser protection by installing a third party plugin software. An installed plugin in general has greater privileges than plain website with JavaScript can gain, making exploits more dangerous. A supply chain attack of DuckDuckGo repository can directly compromise browsers via updated malicious version.
Privacy: a) Each plugin has the potential to increase browser fingerprinting. b) Plugins in general have an easier time to circumvent ad-blocker plugins to send out telemetry or tracking data. DuckDuckGo seems to be one of the better players out there, but for example their hidden cooperation of DuckDuckGo with Microsoft some time ago should be a warning, that it’s best to adhere to Zero-trust principle. At least this extension has open source code available.
Modularization: A dedicated password manager or knowledge app probably is a better location for aliases and/or credentials. Following the Linux principle, a browser should do one thing well, and that is web browsing.
Convenience: Yeah, maybe. But it isn’t hard to copy/paste credentials from a password manager either.
Usage restriction: it doesn’t feel right to be forced on a browser extension. Web pages are the most fundamental, cross-platform-compatible and interoperable medium we have. Web-first/Mobile-first (as PWA) should be the way to go. This is actually similar to why I wouldn’t use mobile App-only Startpage AI.
A bit, since this service otherwise seems to be promising (e.g. providing send direction as well).
