1Password’s brilliant new security feature lets you hide your email

We’ve often recommended password manager apps, as they’re the kind of tools that can help you secure your online accounts without ever having to recycle a password. That’s the main reason why hacks are successful. People use bad passwords for their logins, and they reuse the same email and password combination across multiple accounts. One breach is enough to give a hacker access to all your accounts if you recycle passwords. 1Password is one of the password manager apps that will provide increased peace of mind. The app lets you auto-generate long passwords that you don’t have to remember. And starting this week, the app will also let you hide your email address.

Apple already offers a similar service

Keeping one’s email address private is virtually impossible. Whether you have one or multiple emails, most online services require you to reveal the email address. Sometimes, the email is used for logging into an app or service. Even if you use strong password unique passwords that 1Password generates, hackers can still get access to your emails when they breach sites. That can be bad enough, as hackers can then use the information for other attacks. Often, the email address comes with other personal data about users.

Apple launched last year a service that lets you hide your email address from other parties and upgraded it this year. It started with Sign In With Apple, which lets you anonymize your email address when logging into services that support the feature. This year, Apple went one step further, giving iCloud users a feature called Hide My Email, with lets you generate single-use addresses that forward incoming emails to your real account.

If you’re familiar with all of that, then 1Password’s partnership will Fastmail will make sense instantly.

How 1Password’s ‘hide my email’ works

1Password announced the new “hide my email” initiative earlier this week. Users can now create separate unique email aliases for each online account they manage with the app. 

This is an incredible feature to have in a password manager app. If you integrate Fastmail in your 1Password experience, you’ll be able to hide your email address from the sites and services you have accounts for. The feature won’t let you hide your email from sites and their partners that already have your email information about you unless you create new accounts and terminate the existing ones.

But, from now on, you’ll be able to create a unique email alias that 1Password generates automatically for each new login that you save in the app. It all happens just like the random password generator. That way, you’ll have some control over who gets your email information.

The hide my email feature will ensure that hackers can’t get your actual email after stealing information from a company you have an online account with. But also important is the second type of protection the feature offers. It’ll help protect against spam and tell you which sites sell your data to advertisers.

The server doesn’t come free of charge, however. You’ll need a Fastmail subscription to make it work on top of the 1Password one. Fastmail subscriptions start at $3 per user per month, running up to $9 per month. But you get 25% off your first year if you sign up via 1Password. Regardless of what account you choose, you get “600+ alias addresses,” which should be more than enough for most people.