Microsoft Hides Your Email Address via Hotmail Aliases | News & Opinion

February 3, 2011 07.43pm EST

Microsoft Hides Your Email Address via Hotmail Aliases

By Mark Hachman

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Microsoft said Thursday that it has enabled aliases on Hotmail accounts, allowing people to create temporary email addresses.

Users who create an alias can route emails to that alias to a separate folder, which can then be managed separately. For example, email sent to "markthereporter@hotmail.com" will be sent to a private folder that will be accessible from my main Hotmail account.

Beginning today, users can add up to five email aliases per year to each account, up to a maximum of fifteen.

So far, the alias feature is exclusive to Microsoft; Google hasn't added it to its Gmail mail system.

Microsoft positioned the alias feature as the email equivalent of a one-time credit card number that can be used on a dodgy shopping site. "Let's say you're in the market for a new car," Dharmesh Mehta wrote in a blog post. "There are a bunch of websites that will email you price quotes, sales alerts, etc. During your car search, these messages are helpful, but once you're done, they become clutter that can be difficult to stop. By using an alias on these websites instead of your main email address, you can avoid this. And when you're done, just turn the alias off, ensuring future unwanted messages that are sent to that alias don't land in your inbox."

Gmail does allow users to add a " " to their email addresses to create a sort of alias; addressing emails to "johnqpublic101 home@gmail.com" will route the email to the johnqpublic101 inbox, add indicative stars to them, or route them to the trash. But Mehta also argued that such methods are detectable, including by humans.

Hotmail also allows a user to access email stored in a non-Microsoft account, pulling the information via POP, rather than IMAP.

In December, Hotmail added sandboxing to its email accounts, which can protect the system from malicious scripts. The "Active Views" technology isolates JavaScript. Microsoft also added additional security verification technology, using cell phones and a trusted PC. All are followons to a revamped Hotmail client that Microsoft began rolling out last summer.

via pcmag.com

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