Does it make sense to have separate emails for each individual financial account (banking, credit cards) or is that overkill? I’m just thinking that if a hacker got access to one email they’d have all account information?
I do this for every website, not just financials. As long as you have a quick and easy way to create the email aliases and you’re using a password manager I think it can be an easy and effective boost to security.
I might actually recommend it for anything except financials. For some things, your email address is the only way to access or recover things on the account.
I want something very stable as my email address for such cases, because I don’t want to risk my email alias provider shutting down, or my self hosted setup to randomly die. Or even some weird “security measure” where the bank decides that any unknown domain is no longer ok.
You’ve used some phrasing that I am not really following. What exactly do you mean by “stable” in regards to an email address? And what is an “unknown” domain?
Although I agree with you, I don’t think that’s what OP was asking about based on this part:
I’m just thinking that if a hacker got access to one email they’d have all account information?
It seems they are asking if an separate email account for each service would be beneficial. My opinion is it would limit the attack if an email account was hacked, but definitely not worth the hassle. Email aliasing (like the comment above me says) gives you some of the benefits without needing to juggle multiple accounts.
For privacy? No.
For security? Knock yourself out. Won’t hurt.
They’d only have all account info if the passwords were also the same and you didn’t avail yourself of 2fa/mfa. It’s better to have different strong passwords/long passphrases and use mfa. Separate email accounts become their own vectors for account hacking, not to mention that any personal security scheme you have that becomes too complicated with multiple accounts to juggle is it’s own security problem.
Could you explain how separate emails would increase security risk? I ask because I’ve used separate emails for absolutely everything and it has only ever helped me with security( if I get a Microsoft security notice to anything other than Microsoft@mydoma.in, I know it’s not legitimate).
I don’t mean in lieu of 2fa, strong pass, etc, I mean in conjunction. I don’t see how it could hurt.
Sure. It can be “less” secure from a procedural perspective because it increases the complexity of the user accessing their info. The more difficult/complicated it is for the user, the more likely of user mistakes exposing their accounts in one way or another. Obviously there are password apps that allow for seamless login (some of those can also be problematic), which alleviates the complexity, but then you have multiple email accounts to manage on some level for the various services and websites you use.
End of day, if it works, it works, but it’s important to pay attention to your user experience while also taking in to account the various tools (strong pass, mfa, etc) when setting yourself up. If you get annoyed that you have too many emails to manage, you might be more likely to not log out, or not use mfa, etc.
edit wasn’t trying to say it was WAY more insecure to use separate emails, just that it probably wasn’t necessary if you have different pass and use mfa. Sometimes ‘more, better’ isn’t ‘more-better’.
multiple email account? Not really. It is typically implemented using some email proxy or alias like anonaddy or simplelogin. By the look of it is multiple accounts, but in fact you’re just receiving mail forwarded to you in one account. All you have to do is append any strings as the user with your domain.
(anonaddy and simplelogin requires adhoc address generation using subdomain by them or a domain owned by you with MX records pointing to their servers)
disclosure: I’m a current customer of anonaddy. Never used simplelogin though.
Thanks for the info. You’ll have to forgive my ignorance as I’m not super well-versed but, I was of the impression that alias software like anon and simple login were more for avoiding spam and unwanted emails from sign ups. Is it also effective as a security tool?
I do, but I host my own email to make it easier.
When you start getting spam on an account, its a nice indicator that the company was hacked. And if you didn’t get a notice from the company about the breach, time to close the account.
If you have an easy way to make emails on the fly like Apple’s hide my email feature then it really isn’t an issue to setup accounts with unique email addresses. Some sites don’t allow throw away emails from some providers, but I’ve never had that issue with Apples version since a ban on icloud.com emails would eliminate too many customers.
