Gmail is dealing pretty well with fighting and filtering spam, but every time you share your email, it seems like you could be risking unwanted contacts. Heck, I have an email address specifically for registering here and there, if I put my regular one everywhere, I won’t be able to see legit emails among a bunch of marketing materials and randomness.
It seems Google has a solution to the worry of having to share your email online. Hints about it were discovered in the 24.45.33 release of Google Play Services. The feature is reportedly going to be called “Shielded Email”.
Shielded Email appears to be a system to create single-use or limited-use email aliases that will forward messages to your primary account. It seems to be curated for apps that ask for your email address.
There are quite a few reasons why you’d want your email address private, not only to prevent spam. In fact, keeping your email private can reduce the extent to which your online activity can be tracked, and also can protect you from potential data breaches that could happen in the future.
We don’t know exactly how this feature will function with certainty just yet, as it’s still under development. However, it seems to me to be similar to Apple’s “Hide My Email” feature which also creates an alias so you don’t have to put your iCloud email everywhere.
I like that Google is working on such a feature, and I’m always a fan of efforts to prevent spam and to keep your internet presence private.
