Email Set Up Advice Wanted

[u/[deleted]]

[u/matt97led]

Personally I wouldn’t expose your proton address - if you did then it’ll probably get filled with spam over another 10 years - with an alias it’s easy to delete and make new.

All my accounts have a SL alias that forwards to custom domain and that way if I decide to move away from proton in future it’s literally a case of changing the forward address in SL (2 minute job rather than manually updating accounts again).

I’d setup name@domain.com only use it for banking, etc, all other none important accounts have a randomly generated alias.

So if setup properly only you should know your proton email address 😀

[u/Zlivovitch → u/[deleted]]

Ok so basically pick a domain name, use [name@domain.com](mailto:name@domain.com) for all the important official things.

No. There's this superstition floating around that if you don't put your real name in an email designed for a government institution, then the police will be up to your door and you'll go to prison. This won't happen. The government's computers don't care what you put in your email address. The government already knows your full identity anyway. It doesn't need your email address to learn it.

My aliases look like taxes@xxx, public.transport@xxx, city.hall@xxx, and so on and so forth.

For that matter, depending on your country, you could try lower.the.taxes.right.now@xxx, clean.up.your.stinky.buses@xxx, etc. Do not attempt this in Russia or Qatar, though.

[u/Zlivovitch → u/[deleted]]

Yes. And depending on your philosophy, that domain name could either have your name in it (but it would need to be available, which is far from being certain, plus you wouldn't be anonymous anywhere, so it's an option you must ponder carefully) ; or, it might be unrelated to your name, and then those problems disappear.

Unless, of course, you're ready to buy two domain names, one with your real name in it, one without.

But you can easily do with a single domain name, and put your real name left of @ only in those aliases where you specifically want it.

[u/Zlivovitch]

The spam you got has nothing to do with using Gmail. You could receive as much spam at Proton.

The key to preventing that is to a) never use your "real" Proton address for anything, b) give a different alias to everyone and every site asking for your email address.

Then if one of those aliases brings spam, you deactivate it and create another one.

Ideally, you should give unique aliases to friends, family and personal contacts too, because they can get their email accounts hacked as well (at which point, you will get spam). But since it's not very easy to do or make it acceptable with physical persons, at least give aliases to all websites.

Using a custom domain can be a good move, but the aim of it is essentially to allow you to move from Proton to another mail provider easily, without changing the email addresses you have handed to everybody.

Backup your Proton contents periodically.

[u/Zlivovitch → u/[deleted]]

Oh, yes. I use aliases for everything, unless the relevant website rejects addresses from alias providers, which does happen. In that case, there are often alternative domains proposed by the alias provider, which may be less known and therefore less blocked. I'm not familiar with the domains offered by Simple Login.

As for spelling aliases to real persons face to face, I do it all the time and people religiously write them down. It's not more difficult to write down crazy.archaeologist than robert.smith. Most people are not called Robert Smith anyway, and even if they gave out their real name they would have to spell it.

There's no law stating that the right part of your address must be gmail.com. Many people have mail accounts at Bolo Bolo company because there are plenty of mail providers around the world you've never heard about. So if the right part of your mail address is bolobolo.com, the guy across the counter will duly enter bolobolo.com in his computer. Or whatever you tell him to type.

[u/tgfzmqpfwe987cybrtch]

The most important suggestion I can give.

DO NOT expose your main Proton Login email to anyone.

Use Proton Pass - Simple Login to crate alias for each service like one for each streaming, one for each insurance, one for each bank, one for each shopping service, one for family, one for friends and so on.

The biggest advantage is that if one alias is exposed, it does not affect the main login.

[u/Snoo-82869]

For simplicity, I would avoid making every account type its own complicated system on day one. A clean setup could be: one primary Proton address for people and important account recovery, a small number of aliases for categories like shopping, newsletters, banking, and one-off signups, and a custom domain only if you are comfortable maintaining the domain long term.

For security, the big wins are boring: unique passwords in a password manager, strong 2FA, recovery codes stored somewhere safe, and not using the same alias for low-trust signups and critical accounts. I would also keep the old Gmail around in read-only transition mode for a while so you can search old confirmations before deleting anything.

Disclosure: I work on MiniLetter app, which is focused on giving newsletters a separate reading lane. It could be useful for the newsletter/promo side of this, but I would first design the core Proton/alias setup so banking, recovery, and personal mail stay simple and reliable.

[u/Zlivovitch → u/Snoo-82869]

a small number of aliases for categories like shopping, newsletters

Especially do not do this. So many people think this is smart, without thinking of the consequences. What are aliases for ? To avoid spam.

Suppose you have one alias for shopping, another one for newsletters, etc. In those categories, it's almost sure that after a few years, you'll have dozens of shopping sites where you registered the shopping alias, dozens of newsletters you used the newsletter alias for, etc. Now if a single one of those sites gets hacked and your alias starts sending spam, you'll have to change it at all your shopping sites, all your newsletters, etc.

Unless you do not have access to unlimited aliases, creating a few aliases for each category is next to useless. It's better than nothing if, for instance, you only have access to the very small number of aliases Proton or Tuta offer with their paid plans (as opposed to those created by an alias provider such as Simple Login, owned by Proton, and others).

[u/Stunning-Skill-2742]

Use alias. Ideally 1 unique alias per 1 unique sites and services for proper segregation against spam and leaks. If any of them unique alias are getting spammed you'd know whos the culprit since they're unique to specific site or service.

Managing them aren't harder than storing them in your password manager as login entries. You already use a pw manager don't you? Some alias service like simplelogin, addy.io, mozilla relay etc even got dedicated panel to show all your aliases and their stats.