Here's How You Can Hide From Spam Emails

Here’s How You Can Hide From Spam Emails

Are you tired of receiving unsolicited promotional emails? Exhausted from constantly deleting random newsletters or daily promotions? While you may be able to manually unsubscribe from each of these emails, that can be an incredibly tedious task for any individual. The new software update for iPhones - iOS 15 - offers a solution for these problems. 

How Does It Work? 

This update includes a new privacy feature called Hide My Email which allows you to create burner email addresses. Burner emails are anonymous email addresses that forward emails to your real, personal account. You are able to read and respond to the emails sent to these burner addresses but your personal email continues to remain private. This helps to protect your personal email address by keeping it private from promotional material or other spam emails. 

When Should I Use It?

Hide My Email can be used at any point where you may not feel comfortable giving away your real email address. This may include when you are signing up for an account with an app, signing up for a newsletter or sending an email to someone you do not know. By using Hide My Email, you can still access all of these services, but you are keeping your information more secure by not using your personal email address.

How Can I Enable it?

There are two ways to enable Hide My Email. Both methods require you to be updated to iOS 15 (iPhones released before 2014 will not be able to update to this iOS). The first method is only available if you are trying to create an account with an app or website that supports “Sign in with Apple”. In this scenario, you will have the option to either share or hide your email address. By hiding your email address, the app or website you have created an account with will only be able to contact you through your burner email. 

The second method to access Hide My Email also requires that you have a paying subscription to iCloud (which starts at $1/month and grants you more storage). With an iCloud subscription, you are able to generate unique, random email addresses from any of your Apple devices in any email field in Safari. You would also be able to generate burner addresses via the Settings app or online via iCloud.com. 

Is This Safe to Use?

At the moment, Apple states that they do not read or process any of the content in email messages passing through Hide My Email. The only time Apple may filter through your content would be to perform standard spam filtering for your inbox. Apple further maintains that all email messages are deleted from their relay servers once they are delivered to you.  

Additionally, you have the option to change the email address that receives the forwarded messages at any time. You may even opt to turn off email forwarding to stop receiving messages. 

Have Any Other Questions?

Have any other burning questions? Do you want other tips on how to keep yourself safe and secure? Feel free to connect with one of our security professionals today and we will be able to help you with any and all of your cybersecurity needs.

For more information on cell and mobile security, take a look at this page to check out how we can help protect your mobile devices.