Living and working on the internet means exposing your email address to many opportunities for spam. A new service from Firefox aims to give users more control over the exposure of their email address. Firefox is testing a new browser extension named Private Relay Service. The extension would generate private, or ‘burner’ email addresses as needed, and forward the incoming traffic to the user’s actual email address. These burner addresses could be used to sign up for online services, or be used when a website requires an email address for access to content. Often these websites will use the email address provided to send a confirmation email, and then spam or sell the address to other services.
A burner email address could be turned off temporarily, or deleted all together if the user notices a lot of spam coming from a single outlet.
“Private Relay adds UI to generate unique, random, anonymous email addresses that forward to your real address. You can use your relay addresses to sign up for apps, sites, or newsletters. When you’re done with that service, you can disable or destroy the email address so you’ll never receive any more emails from it.”
The service would also add a layer of security in the event a company’s database is compromised; giving users more control over who has their email address.
The Firefox add-on is currently in testing, but interested users can install the add-on to Firefox now and create a login to be available for the first round of invitations. Apple announced a similar service earlier in the year called ‘Sign in with Apple.’ This service is also currently in testing.
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