Disguised emails, Cyber Empathy, Check My Ads + more 👀
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Disguising email addresses
From a data protection point of view, email addresses are viewed as personally identifiable information (PII) and there’s no doubt that they fall into that category. But, unlike an IP address, name or other PII, an email address is also a direct line to contacting somebody.
What’s more, it’s not uncommon for an email address to reveal who it’s connected to through the format of the email address:
- [first name][last name]@domain.com
- [first name initial][lastname]@domain.com
- [first name]@[company name that’s related to the individual].com
There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but it introduces some privacy issues. What happens if we need to give our email address to a company or person we don’t trust? Or one that has an unknown or questionable record on data protection?
Thanks to services like Apple’s Hide My Email and Fastmail/1Password’s Masked Email service, it’s never been easier to create disguised email addresses, which is a great thing for privacy and security.
Disguising our email address also solves one of the biggest privacy issues with newsletters: many mailing list providers make it incredibly easy for list owners to spy on individual users.
I’ve written more about disguised emails and their benefits over on my website. They could be the future of email.
Cyber Empathy
Andra Zaharia recently launched a new podcast, Cyber Empathy. After we connected through an Unoffice Hours call, Andra kindly asked me co-host future episodes of the podcast.
Andra’s recorded a host of interviews with fascinating guests for the first series, and we’ll be recording some episodes for Season 2 soon.
Find out more and subscribe to the podcast over at cyberempathy.org.
Below Radar 📡
Below Radar launched a few weeks ago and it seems there are lots of freelancers and business owners who feel conflicted about their use of big tech. Over 70 people have joined the Discord.
There are plenty of plans to expand Below Radar in practical ways. Join the community or join the newsletter for updates.
Absorbing
Interesting links from the web.
Check My Ads
From the people that brought us Sleeping Giants, Check My Ads helps to defund misinformation and hate online by helping brands see where their ads are appearing. Check it out and consider becoming a Checkmate, too.
Scary Senders
I’m a little late on the Halloween timing here, but Scary Senders lets you see if the emails you receive contain spy pixels.
Meta will probably use facial recognition tech
After kicking up a positive media storm around how Facebook will no longer use facial recognition technology, it transpires that Meta – Facebook’s paperthin parent company – is likely to use the tech.
It’s so on brand you couldn’t make it up.
Scruples
We’re pretty much booked up until February next year. Now’s a good time to get in touch for projects in 2022.
Unoffice Hours
There are only a six Unoffice Hours sessions remaining until the end of the year.
If you’d like to chat before the year end, now’s a good time to book.
If you run an Unoffice Hours, you might want to join the Unoffice Hours Webring.
If you have related links that might be of interest, or thoughts on any of these topics, I’d love to hear from you: just hit reply.
Until next time,
Dave