Relay Email

Email Forwarding to obscure your real email.  Turn on and off at will.  This is an interesting idea, with many drawbacks.  I am exploring this now.

The problem:  Use a company's service one time and you get slaughtered with hundreds of special-offer emails.  Trustworthy companies have preferences where you can opt-out of marketing emails, but what about those companies which don't?  What about those companies that sell your email address?

If you do not want to hear from them again, or you want to control the traffic, there are two choices:

1.  Register using a disposable email account.

See this keyliner article: "Sharklasers"
http://keyliner.blogspot.com/2017/12/disposable-email-accounts.html
I use this for one-time transactions or for sketchy companies.


2.  Use a Relay Email account - a Fake Email that forwards.

Mozilla.org has a service for Email Relaying, called "Firefox relay." 
Build a "fake" email and they forward to your real account.  Your real email is never exposed to the remote company.  If they bug you too much, turn the relay off.  Each company can have a unique relay.

You do not need to use Mozilla's Firefox browser to use this service.

Illustration is now incorrect.  Now supports 10mb attachments

Benefits:

• The company does not see your real email address.
• Forwarded emails arrive at your normal email address.
• You can turn off forwarding, but leave the email active.
• Mozilla does not store or keep the emails.
• You do not have to be logged in to Mozilla's service to keep it active.

Drawbacks:

• Requires an account on Mozilla.org's (Firefox) servers.  Not a horrible drawback.  I trust Mozilla.
  
  
• This is a subscription service. 
  Five relays are free. 
  After that, $1.00 per month ($12 per year) for unlimited relays
  
  
• A drawback:  Login to the remote company's account screen and change your contact information to the new weirdo-email address.  You have to use that weirdo address when you login to their website. 
  
  If you subscribe, you can build you own email subdomain and use any email you like.  For example, with Shutterfly, illustrated above, I could build a much easier-to-remember relay like this:
  
  Shuttery-fly@keyliner.mozilla.com  or
  Shutterfly@keyliner.mozilla.com or any other name within the same sub-domain
  
  
• If the subscription lapses, emails are still forwarded, but you won't be able to manage the accounts or build new relays.  This seems to be a new feature (reviewed again on 2022.06) or I may have missed this before.  Relay's FAQ page is worth reading.
  
  
• If you block the vendor remember to re-enable forwarding if you need that occasional email.  Lost (blocked) emails are not recoverable.  Relay does not keep emails.  (They forward successfully or they are gone.)
  
  
• Relay forwards emails to the account you registered with.  Because I have three email services (one for personal emails, one for trusted companies, and a third for worrisome contacts), it would be neat to forward to different accounts.  I suppose Mozilla would have no way keep this from being abused by spammers.  Imagine I added a second email for my arch-enemy.... 
  

When to use:

• Use this for those companies you have infrequent business with. 
  
  
• Use this service if you suspect the company might sell your email address, or if the company pummels you with spam -- I'm looking at you Shutterfly, and you, Office Depot.
  
  
• Do not bother with companies you frequently use and trust (Amazon, or BestBuy, etc.) 
  
  
• If you are using Firefox's browser, they have a plugin/addon that lets you build fake email addresses on-the-fly, while you are on the vendor's registration page. The plugin is not at-all required.
  

Hints:

This means when logging into the vendors site for support, new orders, etc, you have to use the fake email -- this is cumbersome.  Keep track of this in your phone's address book, building an entry for each company or use Keyliner's Earl Keeper program. Naturally, you can copy from the Relay site, where all of your relays are stored.  Upgrade to the subscription service and this problem goes more-or-less away.

You still login with your original password and (2-factor,if being used)

When building a Relay, click the Edit icon and name the relay ("Shutterfly," illustrated above).  This is hard to figure out unless you know to look for it.  I wish the description field were wider.

Naturally, you have to tell the vendor this is your new email address.  It may take them a (few days, weeks) to convert their spam-email lists to the new address and they might continue sending to both addresses.  It is best to generate the relay before first contact.

2022.06 Update
I am still a light Relay user.  Despite all the drawbacks, this is an interesting product.  I am considering subscribing but have not pulled the trigger.  This isn't expensive; it is just, well, a bit cumbersome -- especially when I have a well-established email address that I use for all flaky vendors....


Mozilla Firefox Relay Setup:
https://relay.firefox.com

https://relay.firefox.com/?utm_source=www.mozilla.org-home&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=home