Email Aliases vs Disposable Email vs Plus Addressing
There are three common ways to avoid giving websites your real email address: plus addressing, alias services and disposable inboxes like EmailVanish. They sound similar but protect you in very different ways. Picking the right one for each sign-up keeps your main inbox clean without ever locking you out of an account you need.
1. Plus addressing (subaddressing)
Many providers, including Gmail and Outlook.com, deliver mail sent to yourname+anything@provider.com into the ordinary yourname@ mailbox. You can give each site its own tag, such as yourname+shoestore@gmail.com.
- What it is good for: sorting and filtering. You can set a rule that moves everything addressed to
+shoestoreinto a folder, and if spam ever arrives with that tag you know exactly who leaked or sold your address. - What it does not do: hide your real address. Anyone can delete the part after the plus sign, and spammers' software routinely does. Some sign-up forms also wrongly reject the plus sign.
- Cost: free and already built in.
2. Email alias services
An alias service gives you addresses on its own domain that forward to your real inbox, for example shop.x7k2@relay.example. Well-known options include Apple's Hide My Email (with an iCloud+ subscription), Firefox Relay, DuckDuckGo Email Protection, SimpleLogin and addy.io. Most have a free tier with limits and a paid tier with more aliases or custom domains.
- What it is good for: accounts you want to keep, but at arm's length. Receipts, password resets and account alerts all reach you. If one alias starts receiving spam, you switch it off and the rest of your mail is untouched. Several services also strip tracking pixels from forwarded mail.
- What it does not do: remove the need to trust someone. The alias provider sees the mail it forwards, and if the service shuts down your aliases stop working, so for important accounts check that you can export or change them.
- Replying: most services let you reply through the alias so the other side never sees your real address.
3. Disposable inboxes
A disposable inbox, like the one on the EmailVanish home page, is a real address with its own short-lived inbox. There is no forwarding and no account: you read the message on the web page and it is deleted minutes later. (We explain the mechanics in How a Temporary Email Address Actually Works.)
- What it is good for: one-time sign-ups, downloads and confirmations where you never want to hear from the site again. Nothing links the address to you, and nothing about you is stored.
- What it does not do: keep working. Future emails, including password resets, go nowhere. It also has no password, so anyone who knows the address can read it while it exists.
- Cost: free, with no sign-up.
Side-by-side comparison
| Plus addressing | Alias service | Disposable inbox | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hides your real address | No | Yes | Yes |
| You keep receiving mail | Yes | Yes, until you turn it off | No, minutes only |
| Password resets work | Yes | Yes | No |
| Needs an account | No (uses your existing one) | Yes | No |
| Can reply | Yes, from your real address | Usually, through the alias | No |
| Shows who leaked your address | Yes | Yes | Not needed |
| Stores your mail | Your provider does | Forwards it; you store it | No, deleted automatically |
| Best for | Filtering, tracking leaks | Accounts you keep | One-off sign-ups |
Which one should I use?
- Banking, work, government, anything important: your real address, protected by a strong unique password and two-factor authentication.
- Shops, apps and services you will keep using: an alias, one per service.
- Newsletters you want but may leave later: plus addressing or an alias, so you can filter or cut them off.
- One-off downloads, articles, Wi-Fi portals, single forum posts: a disposable address.
Many people use all three. The combination means that when a company inevitably suffers a breach (see Data Breaches and Your Email Address), what leaks is an alias you can switch off or an address that no longer exists, not the inbox you have used for fifteen years.
A note on "burner" accounts at big providers
Some people create a second free webmail account just for sign-ups. That works, but it is a full account you now have to secure and check, and providers increasingly ask for a phone number to create one. For most people, aliases and disposable addresses do the same job with less effort.