What The Tech: Tips to protect your email accounts
BY JAMEY TUCKER, Consumer Tech Reporter
I’m willing to bet most people reading this have had their email address exposed in a data breach.
The same email you use for banking, shopping, and even government accounts. And it might have started with something as simple as signing up for 10 percent off an order of fries.
Check if your email has been exposed
If you want to see whether your email has been part of a breach, there’s an easy way to check. Go to ‘Have I Been Pawned’ and type in your email address.
If it shows up, your email has been included in one or more known data breaches.
And if it does, you’re not alone.
Why this keeps happening
Once you give out your primary email address, it can be shared, sold, or leaked. From there, it can be used to:
● send spam
● target you with phishing scams
● attempt to access your accounts
You may not even remember where you gave it out in the first place.
A simple way to protect yourself
Going forward, there’s a simple way to limit the damage.
Use a second email address. Sometimes called a burner email, it keeps your primary inbox separate from everything else online.
Think of it this way. Your main email should be reserved for:
● personal communication
● financial accounts
● work and trusted services
Everything else gets the burner. Two easy options to get started
Create a separate email with Proton Mail
Proton Mail lets you create a completely separate email account for free.
You can use it anytime a website asks for your email address. It’s not tied to your primary inbox, so if it starts getting spam, your main email stays clean.
Use masking with Firefox Relay
Firefox Relay takes a different approach. It creates masked email addresses that forward messages to your real inbox. You can use those addresses when signing up for websites. If one starts getting spam, you can turn it off and the messages stop.
More importantly, the sender never sees your real email address.
The bottom line
You may not be able to stop spam completely. But you can control where it goes… and who gets your real email in the first place.
