Email privacy glossary

An additional email address that forwards messages to an existing inbox. People use aliases to keep their main address private or to separate different kinds of mail.

An alias created specifically to hide your real address from the sender. Also called an email mask. Every Hskky alias is a masked email.

The practice of giving out masked emails instead of your real address, so you can stop or replace them without changing the address your contacts and accounts rely on.

A temporary, often public inbox that expires after minutes or hours. Useful for one-off codes, but unreliable for accounts you need to keep, and frequently blocked by websites. Also called a disposable or temporary email.

Automatically passing a message received at one address on to another. Forwarding is how an alias delivers mail to your real inbox.

The real inbox an alias forwards to. Hskky asks you to verify each destination address so mail can only be forwarded to inboxes you control.

An alias made of generated characters, such as a short string of letters and numbers. Random aliases reveal nothing about you.

An alias whose name you choose. On Hskky Plus, custom names need at least six characters and can use lowercase letters, numbers, periods and hyphens.

A feature of some providers where adding a tag after a plus sign creates a variant of your address. It helps with filtering, but it still exposes your real address, and spammers can remove the tag.

A setting that delivers mail sent to any name at a domain into one inbox. It’s convenient on your own domain but attracts spam aimed at guessed names.

An alias you’ve switched off. On Hskky, forwarding stops immediately and the alias can be reactivated during its two-month safety window.

The two months after an alias is stopped, during which mail isn’t delivered but the alias can be reactivated. After the window, the alias is removed.

Keeping a deleted address permanently out of circulation so no one else can register it. Hskky quarantines every deleted custom name to prevent account takeover through password resets.

Reissuing a deleted address to a new person. It’s risky because the new owner may receive password resets and private mail meant for the old one.

When someone gains control of your account, often by requesting a password reset to an email address they control or have access to.

An attack where email and password pairs leaked from one site are tried automatically on many others. Unique aliases make these lists far less useful to attackers.

An incident in which a company’s customer data, often including email addresses, is exposed or stolen. Breached addresses commonly end up on spam and phishing lists.

A permanent delivery failure returned to the sender, such as “550 user not found”. It tells the sender the address can’t receive mail.

A tiny invisible image in an email that reports when, and sometimes where, a message was opened.

Email authentication standards that help receiving servers check a message really came from the domain it claims to be from. Forwarding services rely on them to keep mail out of spam folders.

Messages that impersonate a trusted company or person to trick you into giving up passwords, payment details or access. Phishing campaigns often target addresses from data breaches.