Today, one of the elements we use the most on the Internet is email. We use it both for work and for private life and it has become an essential tool. In addition, it is becoming increasingly important, as it is gradually replacing the postal service for many things. Thus, for example, receiving messages from our bank and other confidential information is the order of the day. However, it is very common for many websites, forums and stores to ask us for our e-mail. So we wonder if we should hide the real email address and that is what we are going to determine.
A very common thing that we usually face is that we are asked with some frequency is that we put our e-mail to:
- Register in a forum.
- To be able to test some kind of software.
- Create an account to buy in a store.
- To receive information about a product that interests us.
In these situations you have to take your period of reflection, and decide whether or not I should hide my real email address on the Internet. Here we are going to give some guidelines that will serve us as a way of acting.
Dangers of giving our real email address
Every time we enter our e-mail in any form, if we do it in an inappropriate place, we may suffer the consequences. One of the most typical that we can suffer is Spam . In case you do not know, it is the mass sending of unwanted email or also known as junk mail.
Thus, messages for advertising or commercial purposes are sent to a large number of recipients. This is a serious problem that affects everyone, since users have to delete them. It also hurts mail providers who have to spend money on anti-spam measures, and it also consumes their storage.
Another very typical one is Phishing, the purpose of which is to steal our account credentials and other sensitive information. It all starts when you send a message posing as a legitimate business or organization. That e-mail that they send us usually contains a link that directs us to an attacker’s web page or to a malicious file. We are facing a case of the identity theft of an organization in which the victim will believe that they are on the official site. The objective is that, by logging in normally, the user ends up handing over their account data to the cybercriminal. You may be interested in knowing the most common Phishing strategies in social networks.
Also, we have chains of false messages with false alerts that ask us to spread the message among our acquaintances. Here, be careful with using the real email address because if our message is classified as Spam very often it can end up in an anti spam filter and never reach its destination.
When should we use our real email
We have to be cautious when using our real email address. Some sites where we could use it are:
- To receive certain information from our bank.
- Also for the accounts of large online or physical stores with a lot of prestige.
- Registration in forums with a good reputation and a long tradition.
- To maintain contact with trusted people, whether on a personal or work level.
The good thing about reputable sites is that if at any time we want to stop receiving your messages by clicking on a link that usually comes below we can stop receiving them.
On the other hand, if we use our real email address in the wrong place we can have our inbox saturated with Spam for a long time.
Tips for using your real email address well
A good practice to start with may be to use multiple email accounts . For example, one for work, another for private use and a third for receiving information. The latter is the one we would use in the most doubtful cases.
If we send the same email to several people and we want the recipients not to be able to see the addresses of the other recipients of the email, use the blind copy option . Thus, you better preserve their anonymity and that they end up being a victim of Spam. Also, if we are curious and want to receive certain information but we doubt that later we will be bombarded with Spam, we could create a temporary email to protect privacy.
Finally, another option to protect the information we send may be to encrypt the emails we send .
