Brave has added email aliases to its browser, giving privacy-focused users a fresh reason to move away from Chrome. Announced this week, the feature lets you sign up for websites and online services without handing over your personal email address.
To get started, you first create a Brave account and supply your real email address. Once you are logged into the browser, a pop-up appears when you click an email field on a website, offering the option to use an alias instead. If the pop-up does not show up, right-clicking the field brings up the same choice. The alias fills in automatically on the site’s form, and any messages sent to that address are forwarded to your primary inbox.
How Email Aliases Protect Your Privacy
According to the company, using an alias helps shield your identity because websites often treat your email as a personal identifier that can be used to target you with ads. Ad tech companies such as Meta can match the email you enter on a retailer’s site with the address they already have on file, letting them track what you viewed or purchased.
There is also a security benefit. If a website where you shared your email is breached, attackers gain access to your primary address, which can then be leaked or sold to data brokers. Aliases are designed to close that gap by keeping your real address out of circulation.
What Brave Does With Forwarded Mail
Brave says it does not read the contents of emails sent to an alias. It only processes them to filter for spam and viruses, and once a message is forwarded, Brave deletes it from its servers. All data in a Brave account is encrypted at rest, and any notes saved alongside an alias are stored locally on your device unless you enable syncing. With sync turned on, those notes are encrypted end-to-end.
Because the feature is still new, Brave warned that some forwarded messages may initially land in your spam folder. That should improve over time as the company builds up its reputation as a mail provider.
How Many Aliases You Get
For now, Brave users receive five free email aliases. The company says additional aliases will be available to Premium plan subscribers in the future.
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Image: techcrunch.com
