Brave browser has introduced a new feature designed to keep your real email address out of the hands of websites, advertisers and potential attackers. The privacy-focused alternative to Google Chrome announced its email aliases tool, which lets users create several managed dummy email addresses that contain no personal information and forward all incoming mail to a main inbox.
Sharing your email during a website sign-up carries several risks. Beyond the threat of your details being scraped during a data breach or your inbox being flooded with phishing attempts, an email address can be used to track you across the web. According to Brave, ad tech companies such as Google, Meta and LinkedIn publicly promote how businesses can upload email addresses to match customers against their own user profiles. These firms have been known to trade information to establish what people buy and where, building ever larger profiles. Brave says its email aliases were created to close this privacy gap.
How to use Brave’s email aliases
The feature is not switched on automatically, even for existing Brave users. To get started, open a Brave desktop browsing session and navigate to the Brave login page at brave://settings/email-aliases. Sign up and verify your main email address.
Once set up, you can right-click on any website’s email address field within the Brave browser to create and use a new alias. Free accounts include five dummy addresses. To manage them, head to the “autofill & passwords” page in the Brave browser settings.
All mail sent to an alias is forwarded to the email address used to register the Brave account. Users are advised to check their spam folder regularly to ensure no messages are missed.
What this means for your privacy
Because Brave needs somewhere to forward your mail, you must supply your main email address when signing up. Keeping that address in one place, however, is safer than spreading it across the internet, where it can be caught up in hacks and potentially sold to data brokers.
Brave has offered several security assurances around the service. All data associated with the alias emails is encrypted at rest, meaning it is cryptographically scrambled for the short time it remains on the company’s servers. The company states that it does not read the contents of emails sent to an alias, processing them only to carry out standard spam and virus filtering, which it says is necessary to maintain its status as a reputable email provider. Once an email is delivered, it is deleted from Brave’s servers within seconds.
The email aliases feature is available to Brave desktop users, with five free dummy addresses provided to each account.
