Email aliases: SimpleLogin, Firefox Relay, Hide My Email and more

An email alias is an address that is not your real one but delivers to your real inbox. You make a new alias for each website. Mail sent to it is forwarded to you, and the website does not learn your real address.

That helps in three ways. If a website is breached, the leaked address is the alias, not your real one, so the leak is harder to tie to your other accounts. If a site sells or spams the address, you can see which site it was and switch that one alias off. And because each account has its own address, a scammer who has one of them learns less about where else you have accounts.

SimpleLogin's free plan gives you 10 aliases. Premium costs $36 a year or $4 a month; the pricing page does not name the currency. SimpleLogin says it is a product of Proton AG, and that Premium now includes Proton Pass premium features.

Limitations: once you reach 10 aliases on the free plan, you cannot make more until you upgrade or delete some.

Apple says Hide My Email makes unique, random addresses that forward to your personal inbox. You can read and reply to mail sent to them, and when you deactivate an address it stops forwarding. It comes with every iCloud+ plan. In Australia, iCloud+ starts at A$1.49 a month for 50 GB.

Limitations: it is easiest on Apple devices and needs a paid iCloud+ plan.

DuckDuckGo calls Email Protection a free email forwarding service. It says you can create unlimited unique private addresses and that it removes several kinds of hidden email trackers.

Limitations: the help page we read does not explain replies or limits, so check those before you rely on it.

addy.io's free plan includes unlimited aliases on your own username, 10 random aliases, forwarding to one inbox and 10 MB of forwarded mail a month. Paid plans start at $1 a month billed yearly (Lite), with Pro at $3 a month billed yearly or $4 monthly. The page does not name the currency. It is open source, so you can run it yourself.

Limitations: 10 MB a month is small if you forward newsletters or attachments.

Firefox Relay gives everyone 5 email masks for free. Its FAQ says Premium adds custom subdomains, replies to forwarded mail and blocking of promotional email.

Limitations: the list of countries where Premium is sold did not include Australia when we read it. If 5 masks is not enough, choose another service.

Fastmail is a paid email provider with Masked Email built in. Fastmail says each masked address is generated for you, you can make one per service, and you can block or delete it if it gets unwanted mail. It also works from the 1Password and Bitwarden password managers. Fastmail's pricing page lists Masked Email on every plan, with a free trial of up to 30 days.

Limitations: you move your email to Fastmail to use it, which is a bigger step than adding an alias service. The prices we saw had the United States selected, so check the price for Australia.

• Your existing accounts. An alias only protects the accounts you give it to. Every account you made before still uses your real address until you change it.
• Passwords. A breached password is still a breached password. Use a different one for each account.
• Your other details. Your name, phone number and address can still leak with the alias.
• Losing access. If you stop paying or the alias service closes, mail to your aliases can stop. For accounts you can never lose, such as banking and myGov, think hard before you use an alias, or use your own domain so you can move it later.

The useful first question is not which alias service to pick, but which accounts still use your real address. Search your inbox for welcome and password reset emails, or use our guide to finding accounts linked to your email. Then decide, account by account, whether to move it to an alias, keep it, or close it with our guide to deleting old accounts.

In The Event Of does not create aliases. It connects a Gmail or Outlook inbox, reads sender, subject, date and delivery details, and lists the services that appear linked to you. Where it can, it shows the address each service emailed. That is a hint at which address the account uses, not proof, and you confirm it. It may process a short Gmail preview without storing it. It will not find every account.