Tip
What is an alias email address? It is an alternate email address that is designed to protect your personal email address (i.e. shield your real identity). It can be used as a one-time disposable address, as a PO box for a project or to create a buffer between the real you and spammers, hackers, identity thieves, etc. You can create as many of them as you want.
The Alias Manager is accessible from the navbar. It is symbolized by @.
Once you start receiving emails on your alias addresses, you will see the number of emails that were sent to each one (you received 22 emails with the alias you created for Acme in the example above).
To see the details:
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Tap on the alias
A new screen appears and displays the information that relates to the alias and enables you to take several actions.
Let’s say you are in a mall shopping… and really want to buy this new top audio setup. How can you avoid headaches when the seller will ask you for an email address just after you paid? You know the caveat: despite all the seller’s promises, you will probably receive tons of spams because your email address could be shared or sold to other companies…
Unless you open your Pocket Geek Privacy and:
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Tap on the big green
button (bottom right) → It opens a new screen -
Enter the store’s (company’s) name
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Tap on “Save”
We’ll automatically generate an alias email address for you and save it in the Alias Manager. Just give this alias email to the seller and keep your primary email address safeguarded. As easy as it sounds!
Tip
To add privacy to your online accounts, you can also generate alias email addresses to use as User IDs when you are registering on websites or apps with the Pocket Geek Privacy Autofill feature.
Learn more about how to use Pocket Geek Privacy Autofill here
Tip
Quick actions are also available directly from the Home screen of your device. It is now possible to add an account in the Password Manager or a piece of data in the Data Manager and to generate an alias email address from there too. The shortcut takes you directly to the appropriate “creation screen” in the app.
To use this shortcut, find the Pocket Geek Privacy icon on your home screen and apply a “long press” to make the drop-down menu with the list of quick actions appear. You must be logged in to access this feature.
Not easy to remember all those unfamiliar email addresses… But don’t worry, to help you whenever you might need a specific one (to log into a website for example, as aliases can also be used as User IDs when you need an alternate email address for a login), we built-in a powerful search engine allowing you to easily find what you need.
The Alias Manager is your window into the making of your inbox: who are the senders, where did they get your address from, who shares (sells?) your information… You will be able to trace spam back to the website where you originally provided the alias email address. As you regularly check your Manager, you will find yourself in control of what is making its way into your inbox. Now you can play the game too!
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Tap on the alias to expand emails received for that address.
By default, you will receive all the emails sent to your alias address. You can choose who can send you emails by tapping on the status of the emails sent to that alias (block all senders/allow all senders).
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To block (or allow) only specific senders:
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Tap on the toggle at the top of the list of senders to decide whether you want block (gray) or allow (green) emails from unknown future senders that might send emails to your alias.
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Tap on the toggle next to each sender (to gray) to block emails from that sender. Tap on it again (back to green) to start allowing emails again.
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Tip
Emails sent to your alias email addresses are forwarded to your personal email address unless you decide to stop receiving them. Once an alias is deactivated, emails sent to this alias are ignored and no longer forwarded to your inbox.
Once you identified that one of your aliases is obsolete for the use you created it for (gathering travel info for a trip you already took for example), archive the alias and none of the vendors you contacted before will be able to keep on bothering you for services you didn’t ask for. Also, if one of your aliases has been compromised by a website or if you notice that it brings you more spam than joy … just archive it:
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Tap on the alias
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Tap on the “Archive” button
alternatively:
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Apply a long press on the alias (the icon changes into a check)
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Tap on the
icon (top right of the screen)
or:
To see the archived alias, go back to the list of aliases and scroll to get to the very bottom of it. You will see a sub-section called “Archived Aliases”. You can then unarchive the alias and bring it back to the original list (which will allow you to allow senders back in if you want to) by tapping on the alias and tapping on the “unarchive” button, by selecting the alias with a long press and tapping on the unarchive icon or by swiping the alias to the right.
Emails sent to your alias email addresses are forwarded to your personal inbox. When you archive an alias, emails sent to this alias are ignored and no longer forwarded to you.
Deleting an alias email address altogether is a dangerous endeavour since aliases are sometimes used as User IDs (which is a great practice to protect your accounts and your inbox, but it also means that, without these aliases, any communication relative to these accounts can't reach you). Let’s say a service you subscribed to wanted to let you know about a security breach, then they would not be able to contact you by email (even though they may think that they did because the email will not bounce back to them).
Tip
This is why we decided to retire the “Delete” option in the Alias Manager. The “Archive” feature answers the same need but with an easy recovery option. Because of this new security measure, you will see in the “Archive folder” all the aliases that you may have "deleted" while using previous versions of the product. They are still deactivated (all the senders are blocked) but it is now possible to restore the original means of communication with the service provider if needed.