With work from home regimes in place, phishing attacks have seen an increase in the past 18 months or so, as cyber hackers seep their way into the unassuming victims’ lives to perform data theft. As pointed out by the FBI’s 2020 Internet Crime Report, phishing attacks are majorly attributed to the overall cyberattacks, when we talk of the number of victims. Seeing this, Password management and credentials security firm 1Password has announced a new service in collaboration with privacy-oriented email facilitator Fastmail.
The new feature will let users create unique email login aliases – something similar to the Apple iCloud Plus Hide My Email. The Canadian firm will bring the masked email function to the password manager, thereby, providing users with the option to not expose their email addresses to apps or third-party services.
According to Bron Gondwana, CEO of Fastmail, email addresses are an individual’s identity and these credentials can be compromised in some kind of data breach. Therefore, having a second layer of random email addresses is a secure line of defense to a person’s digital life.
The feature will be more than handy for situations where you need to register accounts for temporary purposes or maybe for Wi-Fi networks that are free. These alias email addresses don’t expire at any point in time unless the 1Password user deletes them manually.
There are email aliases in popular services like Gmail. Outlook, etc. but the iPassword Fastmail integration is a level higher. With it, the cyber attackers will have no way of determining your actual email address, and hence, won’t be able to peek into your sensitive information content online.
Once the user creates a primary email address with Fastmail, they can create any number of alias emails under the profile and have complete freedom to pause the emails coming from individual alias. The emails can even be forwarded to another email account which is handy for people who can’t live with the hassle of maintaining multiple email accounts.
According to Troy Hunt, the founder of Have I Been Pwned (trusted data breach tracker) and strategic advisor at 1Password; “It’s more important than ever that we protect our privacy; and protecting the primary key to our digital lives – our email address – will have a really positive impact.”
