Email Aliases: How to Hide Your Real Email Address

An email alias lets you sign up for things without handing over your real address. If the alias leaks or fills with spam, you switch it off.

By Siddharth ShankarUpdated October 18, 2026

Every site that has your email address is a site that can leak it, sell it or get breached. An alias reduces the damage. Instead of one address shared everywhere, each service gets its own. If one starts getting spam, you know who leaked it and you can shut it off without changing your main email.

There are three common ways to get an alias, from free and simple to fully private.

1. Gmail plus addresses

Google’s Gmail tips explain that you can add a plus sign and any word before the @ in your address. Mail to yourname+shop@gmail.com still arrives in your inbox, and you can filter it by the alias.

• Good for: sorting mail and spotting which company shared your address.
• Limit: your real address is visible in the alias. Anyone can remove the plus part, so it does not hide you from spammers.

2. Apple Hide My Email

Apple’s iCloud guide says that with an iCloud+ subscription you can create unique, random addresses that forward to your personal inbox, and as many as you need. Replies appear to come from the random address, so your real one stays private. It works in Safari, Mail, Apple Pay and supported apps, and you can deactivate or delete addresses you no longer need.

Apple’s Sign in with Apple also offers a hidden address for apps that support it, using the privaterelay.appleid.com domain.

3. Firefox Relay

Mozilla’s Firefox Relay creates email masks that forward to your real address. Free users get five masks and can turn off forwarding for any of them. The paid plan adds unlimited masks, blocking of promotional emails, replying from masks and phone masks.

Other privacy email providers offer similar alias features. The idea is the same: a separate address per service, which you control.

When to use an alias

• Online shopping and loyalty accounts
• Newsletters and free trials
• Wi-Fi sign-ins, contests and one-off downloads
• Forums and comment sections

Keep your real address for banks, government services, your employer and people you know. Those accounts need reliable delivery, and you want to be able to recover them easily.

Setting up your first alias

Aliases and account recovery

An alias is only useful if you can still get into the account later. Before you switch an important account to an alias, make sure the alias tool is one you plan to keep, and that you can still receive messages to it. Deleting an alias means you will no longer receive password resets or security alerts sent to it. For anything you would hate to lose access to, a dedicated private address is often safer than a disposable alias.

What aliases do not fix

Aliases protect you going forward. They do not remove your real address from breaches or lists it is already on. Check where your current address has leaked with the free tool on this page, then see how to stop spam emails and how to remove your email address from the internet.

Aliases also make credential stuffing harder, because attackers cannot simply try the same email everywhere. Pair them with unique passwords for the best effect.