What is Email Masking?

February 20, 2024
·
5 min
deleteme

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Sharing your email publicly is like inviting hackers over for a free meal. You’ll not only receive more of the 8 billion spam emails originating in the U.S. every day, but you’ll likely receive more emails that contain malware and phishing links. That is where email masking–or email cloaking–helps.

Whether you’re concerned about online dating privacy, personal security, or data breaches, you can keep your mailbox clean and secure with masked emails. We explain everything you need to know about masked emails in this guide, including how to get them.

What is Email Masking?

Email masking refers to using a temporary email address to conceal your real email address. When someone emails you on the masked email, it forwards that email to your real email address so you never have to share your real email with the sender.

Apps like Cloaked make email masking super easy. Calling the process “email cloaking,” Cloaked makes your data invisible by generating unlimited identities for emails, phone numbers, and logins and passwords. You can create, share, and save real, working, “cloaked” emails that you can use in any situation where someone is asking for your personal information.

Masked Email vs Email Aliases

Email masking almost sounds like a marketing name for email aliasing. But there’s a slight difference between the two. Email masking (or email cloaking) is a specific type of email aliasing where you use an alternate email to hide your primary email.

Email aliasing is a broader term that refers to using multiple emails associated with a single mailbox. This includes using an alternate email address to conceal your primary email or manage communication channels.

Email Masking Example

Suppose your real email is [email protected]. You want to sign up on a website–but you’re concerned about spam and your email ending up in the wrong hands.

You sign up for Cloaked and generate an identity (which includes a new email). Let’s say your cloaked email is [email protected].

You use this email to sign up on the website. All emails are forwarded to your real email. And you can respond using your cloaked email.

It’s that simple.

Cloaked makes it even more simple by allowing you to generate emails with a single click. 

Join Cloaked today and cloak your email in seconds!

Methods of Email Masking

You can mask your emails using various methods. We discuss them below in order of convenience, starting with the most convenient.

Email Masking Services

Email masking services are the most convenient way to mask your email. They generate unique emails in real-time—no need to sign up for a fresh email account.

When someone emails your secondary email, it’s forwarded to your real email. The sender or recipient of emails never knows your real email.

The top masking services allow you to create new emails on the go and trash them in an instant.

If you want your cloaked email in less than two minutes, download the Cloaked app and sign up. Tap on the “Create” button and generate your email—easy-peasy:

email masking

Once you have your new email, use it to sign up for any online account, whether it’s Airbnb, social media, or dating apps. You can create separate emails for each category or even create separate emails for each potential date you’re interacting with.

Need to discontinue conversation with one of the potential dates? Trash the email and you’re done. Masking your email only takes seconds with Cloaked — try Cloaked today!

Temporary Email Addresses

A temporary email address is a second email you sign up for manually. For example, you can go to Gmail and create another account for yourself. Then set up forwarding so all emails are forwarded to your real account.

Creating temporary emails isn’t complex. It’s tedious.

Each time you sign up for an email, you need to enter all the details. Some email services even require you to verify your identity using a phone number. To stop receiving emails, you’ll have to reconfigure the forwarding settings.

While this is possible, it’s impractical if you want to create multiple email addresses and trash them each month.

Custom Domain Aliases

Usually, you would need to own a domain to create custom domain aliases. For example, if you own maskthyemail.com, you can create aliases like [email protected] and [email protected].

You can configure these aliases to forward emails to your primary email. It’s the same process you’d use to forward emails when using temporary email addresses from a third-party provider.

As you can imagine, creating new emails can be tedious. Domain and hosting service providers may impose a limitation on the number of emails you can create per domain or hosting account, so that’s another factor to consider.

Email Masking Use Cases

While most commonly used to protect privacy, email masking is used for various other purposes as well. Here’s an overview of the most common email masking use cases:

Privacy

Suppose a consultant sent you a cold pitch via LinkedIn. You’re interested, but you don’t want to share your business or personal email.

You can share a cloaked email to keep your real email private. And you don’t have to go out of your way to sign up for a new email. Just generate one with Cloaked in seconds.

Starting Subscriptions & Trials

You saw an interesting new photo editing tool online. But you’re not sure you’ll want to use it for long; you’re just considering signing up for the trial right now.

What if you’re worried this photo editing tool will sell your data and you’ll start receiving a gazillion spam emails every day?

Cloaking your email protects you against spam because you can simply discard the email. When starting subscriptions and trials, use a second email so you’re always in control of what reaches your primary mailbox.

Phishing Prevention

Suppose you received a phishing email. You couldn’t tell it was a phishing link so you clicked on it. The phishing page captures your email and password.

Problem, right?

Well, not if you were using a masked email. The masked email is pretty useless to the attacker because:

  • You don’t have any confidential information linked to your masked email
  • You can always trash the masked email with a few clicks

How to Use a Masked Email Address

Using a masked email is fairly simple once you have access to the right email masking service. Below, we walk you through the exact steps you need to create a masked email.

1. Sign Up With Cloaked

You need a reliable service that can generate email addresses at the click of a button.

Download Cloaked for your device—use the web app if you’re using a computer or download the mobile app via the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.

Sign up for a Cloaked account and follow the prompts to get your account set up.

2. Get Your Cloaked Identities

Once you’re logged in, click on “Create” to create a new identity. Name your identity.

Go into the “Identities” section, select your identity, and generate a new email address.

Cloaked identity

3. Stay Protected Online

Use this email to protect your identity online. When signing up for trials, dating websites, or anything where you want the option to abandon within seconds, use your masked email.

Cloaked lets you generate as many emails as you need. And you can create and trash them instantly. This means you’re always in full control of your privacy.

Need to mask your email? Use Cloaked to generate a new email in seconds!

Pros & Cons of Email Masking Online

Email masking does have limitations, but as we discuss below, the benefits far outweigh the limitations.

Benefits of Email Masking

The benefits of email masking, or Cloaking, include:

  • Protects your privacy: Masking your email helps keep your personal or business email a secret. You can receive emails in your primary mailbox, but you never have to reveal your email address.
  • Prevents spam and phishing: When you notice a rise in spam emails coming into your second email address, you can simply trash that email and create a fresh one. There’s also a lower likelihood of losing your accounts linked to your primary email to a phishing attack.
  • Helps organize emails: Creating multiple emails for various aspects of personal and business life makes organizing your emails easier. You can receive banking and investment emails, email notifications from dating sites, and emails from trials you signed up for in separate email accounts.
  • Useful for temporary communication: Need to share your email with a marketer offering to try some interesting software? Use a cloaked email to receive emails to your primary account. When you no longer need an email, delete the email, and you’ll no longer have to deal with spam or unwanted attention.
  • Helps prevent account linkage: Since most of the vital services and platforms you use—bank accounts, business software, you get the idea—are linked to your primary email, it doesn’t matter even if your cloaked email is compromised. Using secondary email also prevents companies from tracking and profiling, which means they can’t track user behavior, preferences, and activities associated with your primary email.

Email Masking Limitations

Email masking has a few limitations, but it’s easy to address them once you know what to watch out for. Here’s an overview of the limitations of email masking:

  • Juggling multiple emails: When you use a separate email to communicate with pen friends, protect your privacy on dating sites, and try software solutions, you’re likely to lose track of which email you’re using for what. If you use an app like Cloaked, you can name each identity in a way that makes identifying the purpose easier. With most other apps, you’ll need to track emails and their purpose using a spreadsheet.
  • Risk of untrustworthy services: You might end up with an untrustworthy email masking service. Service providers that mishandle your data or don’t offer adequate security. It’s kind of like handing over your secret identity to the wrong superhero team.

Use the Best Email Masking Service

While there are plenty of email masking services online, not all of them are reliable. Many don’t offer the feature set that makes creating and managing emails easier.

Enter Cloaked. 

Cloaked helps you generate new identities and emails in seconds. The app has a built-in inbox for easier management, but you can also forward emails to your real email if that’s more convenient. 

The platform secures all your data using the best-in-class encryption protocols and we’re always available to support you through any challenges or questions you face.

Ready to cloak your email?

Try Cloaked!

Protect yourself from future breaches

You can try Cloaked for free for 14 days
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