how not to sign up

Why using your main email for signups risks your privacy and how to stay safer online.

You probably would have used your primary email ID to create accounts on various platforms/services. Honestly you don’t even use them anymore or worst you don’t even remember the services you signed up for!

It happens, we find a particular service interesting we straight away go and create an account. Do we take a moment to stop and look at that checkbox really close that says “Please take a moment to review our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy”? Whatt!!! Why would i want to waste my time going through their policies, let them do what they want!

This behavior is totally fine as long as you’re not using your primary email ID right? But hold up! Not all have a secondary account so we end up using our personal one, which puts your PII at risk!

Wait! What Risk Actually?

Data Breaches

Ah the worst security incident that a company can face. Unfortunately data breaches have increased rapidly, which has even affected the most valued companies too!

Once your data is wide open to the public, there’s nothing that can be done at this moment to stop it. You would have to reset everything, I mean absolutely everything! Linked accounts, passwords and maybe start using an alternavitve “primary email ID”.

Increased Spam/Junk

Would you want an unwated advertising mail sent to you every single minute/day? RN there are many agencies that actually sell off your PII just for a couple of bucks which then is used to promote spams.

Phishing

Once your PII is leaked, it’s not that difficult to hunt down your linked accounts and so on. You would’ve already got a glimse of what I’m trying to explain, if not here you go. A really well crafted phishing email try to make you think that your account passwords has been compromised/reset.

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So, What’s the Solution?

This is where temporary email services actually come into picture or let’s say “actually save you”.

Temporary email services are free to use, of course if you pay you unlock additional features but let’s stick to the free plan RN. If you’re just trying to test out some new service/website/app it’s always better to use temp. emails insteadof your personal ones even though they look promising. I’ve listed down some of the temp. email services I regulary use, there any many out there feel free to stick to the one your comfortable with.

Mail.tm

A personal favorite of mine, completely free to use with no hidden registration fees. And the best part? You can create multiple accounts easily and access them anytime you’d like.

Guerrilla Mail

Another personal favorite, again completely free and you can even compose emails to anyone! Yes you saw that right, recieve and compose all together.

Temp Mail

Another easy to use service with free and a premium paid plan to use from. The only drawback is that free domains are mostly blacklisted so use it wisely!

These were some of the best temp. email services, like I mentioned there are others as well. For e.g. Crypto Gmail, Smail Pro and so on.

Next time when you sign up for a new service, make sure to take a moment before you start using your personal email ID everywhere.

I’ll see you in the next one until then goodbye & stay safe 😉!