Apple’s Hide My Email feature has been one of its best, an incredibly easy-to-use and intuitive security measure that even the most Luddite iPhone, iPad, or Mac user can wield.
Come upon a website or an app that requests you sign up for an account, and a prompt will ask if you want to use Hide My Email to generate a unique, random email address that forwards messages to your chosen inbox, keeping one layer of separation between you and the website that now houses your account.
It keeps the websites from selling off your email address to spammers, creeps from intercepting your true identity, and data breaches from narcing on your precious, real email address. And it only takes one button press to activate when prompted. Easy, safe, and envy-inspiring among those using Google’s Android devices, which don’t have such a feature.
Not for long, it seems. Google hasn’t announced it, but Android Authority noticed that something called Shielded Email was mentioned in an earlier Google Play Services APK, and now they’ve been able to activate a pre-release version of it that isn’t yet operational.
the benefits
“When it becomes functional, and based on the strings we’ve previously discovered, it should technically offer to generate a new single-use or limited-use email address for that app or website in an Apple Hide My Email-like fashion,” writes Android Authority.
“Any email you receive at that new address will be auto-forwarded to your main address, which is kept private, and you can stop forwarding at any point to avoid any bad spam.”
There’s no word yet on when Google will go live with the feature, although given that it’s already begun to leak partially into the real world, it can’t be that far away.
Using an email alias is one way to improve your online security. As the scammers and spammers get more sophisticated, so too do our digital protection methods need to become stronger. Another way you can protect yourself online is to use a VPN.
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