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Email Address Protection

by | Dec 8, 2016 | Email Campaigns, Marketing, Social Marketing, Tips & Tricks

Email Address Protection

Email Address Protection

How to Protect Your Email Address and Identity from Hackers

I recently read a warning from my website protection plugin ‘Wordfence‘ that if you are a Gravatar user, your email address can be compromised by hackers thus opening the door to wide-spread spam email.  First of all, for all you non-techies, what in the world is a Gravatar and secondly how can the average non-techie person add email address protection to their online interactions

‘A Gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar. You upload it and create your profile just once, and then when you participate in any Gravatar-enabled site, your Gravatar image will automatically follow you there. Gravatar is a free service for website owners, developers, and users.’
Now for those of you that have no idea how or why to use a Gravatar, I have suggestions on how to protect your email address from spam programs anyway.  I am bringing this to EVERYONE’s attention not just Gravatar users because we ALL should have email address protection!
This is what I found out on how to protect your online identity and email address from hackers.  Wordfence outlined how some email addresses can be protected by creating unique email addresses or alias’ for online sites that you wish to interact with.  Please click on the button below to read the full article by Wordfence outlining how hackers get your information and how you can protect your email and online identity.

Email Address Protection Quick Summary

Now for the non-techies (yes those whose eyes have glazed over), the article by Wordfence may be waaaay over your head so I will try to explain how to add email address protection to your online interactions.

  • Have a gmail or outlook.com email address for online interactions
  • Both gmail and outlook allow you to modify your email address so that you can create unique email addresses for online sites you wish to subscribe or interact with.  Below is an example on how to create alias emails for identity protection

Example:  Regular gmail address is:  tipsandtricks@gmail.com   The alias gmail address for my subscription to amazon website could be:  tipsandtricks+amazon@gmail.com

The key to protecting your email is to add the plus sign and a description word  ‘+amazon’  This alias email address still directs messages being sent to tipsandtricks+amazon@gmail to my regular  gmail account.  Try it our to see if you will work for you.  Outlook email address accept the same protection features.

Not all emails will work with this feature but it is easy to create a gmail account that you can use for online website interactions.

In an age where we are bombarded by emails especially junk or spam, email address protection is a must.

Hope this was helpful and please share with friends and colleagues so we can prevent spam email intrusions.