What instead of Apple iCloud Mail and lots of aliases?

Privacy Questions
1

I’m almost completely deApple and the only service I still use is Apple Mail because I haven’t found a decent alternative yet.

Highlights:

  1. Unlimited number of aliases. This is very important to me because every new account = new email address.
  2. I can create an account on any website using the generated aliases. I had addy.io and SimpleLogin and each of them had smaller or bigger problems.

All right:

  1. Low price.
  2. I trust Apple the most, unlike other Big Tech companies.

Defects:

  1. Lack of certainty about what data they collect and what they share and with whom.

What do you recommend when the most important thing for me is the number of aliases, aliases that work everywhere, the ability to reply to aliases, privacy and that the price is not too high?

1 Like
2

Probably none, the one thing with Apple is that their size is so big that they can’t just be blocked

2 Likes
3

What’s wrong with SimpleLogin? I’ve been using it for a long time and it works great. $30/year doesn’t seem that steep and if you have proton unlimited subscription it is included for free.

1 Like
4

Some (usually shitty) websites blocks alt email addresses such as simplelogin/addy. From the top of my head, canva does it

2 Likes
5

Use your own domain and you won’t have that problem and you can move services without updating your email address on every website that has its own alias ever again. Cheap ones go for $10-12 a year.

4 Likes
6

Not the best for “blending into the crowd” though…

1 Like
7

There is simply no one who has a domain like icloud.com that they also let people use for aliases. Period. Personally I still prefer custom domain with SL and rather avoid services that try to do anything fishy, but with the rules that you set, you’re already at the right place.

8

I don’t recommend to use SL/Addy for critical websites for you, unless you are sure that you won’t be blocked. They cannot replace iCloud hide my email, since apple uses its own iCloud domain for aliases.
I added my proton as the iCloud email address, so I can combine all emails in on place.

9

You really can’t have it all. Every option is a trade off of varying degrees.

With options 1 and 2 you can move between services without changing your emails.

1.) Register a private domain with njalla but it comes at the expense of not truly owning your domain so if they ceased to exist then you don’t have much of a claim to the domain. It’s the second most private option but you have to trust your proxy and risk of loss should not exceed trust of proxy for your threat model.

2.) Register a private domain with a normal registrar and depend on who is privacy. This won’t shield you from state entities or those with significant resources from trying to find you and you can theoretically can be tracked across wherever an address is used (but if it’s generic and has a login site it might be inferred it’s just a smaller mail service).

3.) Use a 3rd party domain at a aliasing service like SimpleLogin or anonaddy. This is a more private option than all others depending on the destination mailbox. The downside is you might be blocked at various websites but it’s cheaper than option 1 or 2 and you don’t need to know about or configure any domains.

4.) Use a 3rd party domain at a larger service like iCloud hide my email. This is less private than options 1-3 due to Apple very likely knowing your identify and location based on simply using iOS and paying for the subscription with a credit card but your likelihood of getting blocked by a site is very low.

2 Likes
10

Thats fair. Like many things in the privacy space ig its a trade-off

11

Huh, why didn’t I ever think of that?

12

I agree, but would also add that it doesn’t need to be an either/choice. I don’t see any reason you couldn’t use a primary and a fallback e-mail aliasing service. (For example, SL or Addy as the primary, and either a more mainstream (e.g icloud) or more unknown/obscure solution for fallback only in cases where SL/Addy is not accepted).

This is something I’ve been pondering and considering for a while.

1 Like
13

Of course (i actually do that).

14

Sorry to bump an older thread but just a suggestion which I have been using since 2007, spamgourmet. It is mail forwarding using self-destructing emails. They also have a bunch of domains available which there is no list of but sleuthing can turn them up and you can donate your own domain for use with their service to them if you want. One of the domains I use a lot is dfgh dot net. Since they have so many domains available you should never experience an issue where a domain is blacklisted when you input it at a website. You construct your aliases on the fly too.

format:
label.3.username@domain.tld

label = some random identifier so you know where you set it up or gave it out
3 = a single character providing the number of emails you want spamgourmet to forward, can also use letters to get up to 20 forwards. This is an optional parameter that defaults to 3 so if you leave it out it assumes only forwarding 3. If you ever need to increase or reset the count you can do it from their website where you can additional add exclusive senders that won’t bump the count.
username = your unique username you signed up with at their website
domain.tld = some domain you want to use, like I said I use dfgh dot net a lot since it is easy to type and it has never been blacklisted anywhere I tried to use it. You can use spamgourmet.com as well but it is blacklisted sometimes I have found.

You can reply to the forwarded emails and it will use the address it was written to as well.