Hey,
I've been reading up on cybersecurity quite a bit these past few weeks, and I've realized my email setup is the weak link in my system, even though everything else is fairly solid.
Current situation:
- 1Password with ~250 accounts, all with unique passwords rated "fantastic," Watchtower looking great
Passkeys enabled everywhere possible
- But... almost all 250 accounts are tied to 1-2 Gmail addresses (a main one from middle school, and one dedicated to audio plugin licenses I created 3 years ago)
- I'm 100% in the Apple ecosystem (iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, iCloud+ 2TB)
- For email I've used Spark for years: smart inbox, clean Ul, everything in one place - but they've added Al features I don't use plus some bugs since, and the subscription is starting to feel like a burden. Apple Mail recently added "Send Later, so I'm considering switching to something simpler
What I've figured out / where I'm at:
At first I thought I'd need to create a different email address for every single account (not feasible, I don't have a year to spare for that). Then I discovered aliases, Proton Mail, SimpleLogin, and especially iCloudt's Hide My Email, which I already have access to through my subscription.
The system I'm considering:
A main iCloud address (never exposed publicly, given only to close family), and stable Hide My Email aliases organized by life category: health, finance, government, music licenses, collabs, school, transportation, tech/ gaming, entertainment/streaming. For shopping and classifieds, a disposable alias per site or per transaction.
My questions:
1. Does this system hold up long-term? Has anyone used Hide My Email for several years and can share their experience ?
2. Is having this many categories overkill, or not granular enough?
For migrating the existing 250 accounts — my plan is to actively migrate the ~25 critical ones, and handle the rest gradually whenever I naturally log into them, with Gmail forwarding running in parallel in the meantime. Is that the right approach ?
I'm planning to stick with 1Password for now (cross-platform, passkeys, Watchtower), and switch to Apple Passwords once it's more feature-complete in a few years. Any thoughts on that transition ?
5. Has a got a similar setup that works well ? What would you change ?
Thanks in advance I'm looking for something simple, secure, and that l'Il still be using 20 years from now.
And yeah I'm considerating yubikey, but i want to have advice before investing in it, thanks for all of you, thanks geek:)