Overwhelmed newbie - rushed email strategy guidance

[EmailNewbie]

@Lunar-Pilot

OP, if I’m honest, it sounds to me like a KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid) rather than the “kissu method” is what you’re after. Not to say their suggestions aren’t good, they just seem far too complicated for where you are right now on your privacy journey. You can always get more sophisticated later if you want, but for now (seeing that you have a deadline and you’re relatively new to the idea of aliases) don’t try and get too fancy else you might find yourself in a situation where nothing works and end up driving yourself nuts.

My simple suggestion would be:

1. Create a 2nd Proton email in your existing account. This will be for friends and family. Don’t stress too much if they happen to share it (if it becomes a problem, down the track you can update your email with those people/providers they have shared this email address with.
2. Create a 3rd Proton email in your existing account. You will not share this address with anyone. This will be a forwarding email address that you will point your aliases to.
3. Start using and migrating to SimpleLogin aliases for everything else.
4. Slowly deprecate the use of your original Proton email address and the gmail addresses (maybe just keep that one gmail address going for the group thing).

At some point, you can look at getting yourself a custom domain (these can are handy for when a service is not accepting of an SL alias address ..or portability if you’re really worried about the very, very unlikely chance of SL “going evil” or closing shop.

You can (and should) reassess your threat model when the you have some more time to spare.

Oh, and DON’T delete your gmail address/es for at least 2 years (or until you are absolutely sure that you don’t have any random services or login details attached to those accounts anymore)!

Anyway, that’s my 2c. Good luck!

Thanks, Lunar, I think I will run with this strategy for this week since I’m already set up and am more worried about my old account that is closing. Definitely on a journey here.

@kissu

My approach is not that hardcore tho:

• get Addy with giftcards or crypto
• get a new free Proton email account
• forward Addy → Proton email
• done

Benefits of it:

• no need come back to it later on

Indeed, superficially that doesn’t seem too bad and I don’t want to revisit this task again but I don’t want to figure out another paid solution this week.

Can I try a free Addy account with a free Proton account to try it out with a few contacts? I am not sure I understand some of the usage limitations, like “anonymous reply + send from daily limit” or “option to disable catch-all.” Does that second one mean I can’t deactivate an alias if it gets compromised or I start getting spam? Correct me if I’m wrong, but the two biggest reasons for the paid plan are shared domains and the bandwidth upgrade?

@Lunar-Pilot

Oh, and DON’T delete your gmail address/es for at least 2 years (or until you are absolutely sure that you don’t have any random services or login details attached to those accounts anymore)!

Thanks, that’s a good point. I was tempted to delete an account, so I’ll hold off on that.

@anonymous559

They said they already have Proton Unlimited so I’m going to assume that they are using Proton Pass as their password manager. If that’s the case, it makes far more sense for them to manage their aliases in Pass (no need for SimpleLogin UI). Even if they are not using Pass as their pw manager, they can manage all their aliases in Pass as it’s far better UX than SimpleLogin (and even addy imo).

I don’t use a password manager. I don’t know much about them but am skeptical until I know more. I also haven’t used Pass at all.

[PaleCrow55]

@EmailNewbie

I don’t use a password manager.

[kissu]

@EmailNewbie

Can I try a free Addy account with a free Proton account to try it out with a few contacts?

Definitely can try that one too.

The important parts for you when comparing free vs paid Addy are:

• Active Shared Domain Aliases (10), that’s the amount of some.cool@addy.to that you’ll be able to create, perfect for a starter and experimenting with the whole alias idea
• Recipients (real email addresses) (1), that’s the forwarding mail email box so for example 10 aliases into 1 single Tuta/Proton/etc

---

I am not sure what Anonymous Reply + Send From Daily Limit is exactly.
I guess you maybe cannot reply from a free Addy account? It is indeed more infrastructure/fees for the developer to handle but I guess that just receiving emails on an alias will be enough for a starter.

Option to Disable Catch-All applies only to your Addy username like emailNewbie@johndoe.anonaddy.com. Usernames are some sort of permanent “anonymous” usernames that can be used as aliases too but that is not really needed nor an amazing use case for you.
Otherwise, the disable catch all will also apply for a custom domain name but again, you’re not the target audience.

@EmailNewbie

I can’t deactivate an alias if it gets compromised

You definitely can. I think the limit is 10 active aliases at a time.
And you won’t get a catch-all spam situation because you won’t be using an Addy username nor a custom domain.

@EmailNewbie

the two biggest reasons for the paid plan are shared domains and the bandwidth upgrade?

The bandwidth upgrade is quite meaningless if you don’t receive 4k videos in your emails haha.
As for the reasons to actually upgrade, those are important IMO:

• more aliases, as in unlimited
• recipients (30), you can have a entire family and friends as targets for the main email boxes
• Available Alias Domains (7), it’s quite cool because you get more domains from Addy, the starter ones are ***@addy.to and ***@addy.io but you can more with the Pro plan. This can help get through some services that tend to block some alias services, worked a few times for me already.

I don’t fully use Rules + Regexes but if you’re a power user that could be a nice workflow too.
But yes, I just realized that Addy is actually quite usable in its free tier as a starter haha.

---

@EmailNewbie

I don’t use a password manager

You should consider that one heavily.
Give Keepass a try, it’s local but no fluff and works great.