Here is your secret weapon to conquering your overflowing inbox

Recently, I came across a post in one of my Facebook groups. This group is primarily women who juggle their job in the tech space while raising children. The post asked if people used multiple emails to limit exposure to account breaches and if so, they wanted advice on setting it up. First, I was surprised people cared enough to plan ahead for data breaches. I was also surprised at the responses, and I didn't realize how much time people spend organizing their emails and online accounts.

I learned that, first, people didn't mind having more than one email account to manage. Many people had several individual email accounts for personal, job search, kids school, travel and e-commerce. Some had an individual email address strictly for bank/financial information." Another person wrote: Email addresses will always end up in breaches, sooner or later. The important part is to never, ever reuse the same password for multiple accounts and activate MFA (multi-factor authentication) whenever possible."

I was curious, so I posted a similar question to my network of friends, previous coworkers and colleagues on LinkedIn. Sure enough, there were similar themes, even though it was on a different platform with different goals. Since LinkedIn is geared toward a more professional audience, the responses were focused on people who had their own consulting business, so separation of work and personal life was essential. Here's what I heard back:

Great question! I have a personal email, professional email and then some of my clients have asked that I use their domain for communication with their teams. One way you can do this is through email siblings." https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/6-clever-gmail-tricks-to-minimize-regret-frustration-and-spam/

I have an insane amount of emails. Several for personal use. Most of my emails auto-forward to one of my main emails for ease. I have all of them, so I'm not giving out one personal email for everything.

I have one for my agency, one for my artistic hobbies (voice over and ceramics), one for general junk email and one for professional stuff that doesn't fall into the other categories. It's kind of a lot, but I feel more organized that way. All are hosted by Gmail and I also have two custom domains.

I have social, banking, spam/shopping, I check none of those, then separate for personal but professional and then personal where friends and travel stuff go, and I actually occasionally check the last 2. I also have one for each of my businesses and of course work email. I barely ever check any inbox, and that's a whole another thread.

It makes total sense for people to have separate email accounts. So, I wondered if there was an easier and better way to manage those emails AND protect your personal information from data breaches. I turned to Firefox Relay, a service where you use email masks instead of your true email address to prevent emails from clogging up your inbox.

Naming it is the key to keeping it organized

I recently started using Firefox Relay after hearing about the latest update which included its integration in Firefox. How it works: Whenever I visit a site and get prompted to sign up and share my email address, I can use one of my Firefox Relay email masks or create a new one. It is super easy to use.

Last month, I signed up for new accounts that needed my email, examples like requesting I get notified when there was a high pollen count in my area and shopping for a new summer hat, so I used Firefox Relay. I can get up to five free email masks. Did you know that you could label each email mask? This allows you to easily tell who is reaching out and how they got your contact information. It's simple: You go to the Firefox Relay dashboard to write each label associated with each mask, like shopping, information or travel.

Plus, you can quickly go to the Firefox Relay dashboard through the Firefox Relay add-on, which gives you a shortcut. Then, you can continue to reuse those email masks. This seems like the perfect solution for people who want to organize their email accounts and have all their emails in one inbox.

Tackle more stuff with the latest Firefox Relay add-on

Recently, we added new features to the Firefox Relay add-on. You can now see it in your toolbar for every site, reusing existing masks and generating a new random mask.

Firefox Relay Premium users can instantly create custom masks through the Firefox Relay add-on. For example, if you have a banking or financial account, you can call it banking@mozmail.com, and add a label like finances.

Whether you have a few or many email addresses, this is an easy way to manage them, and it comes from a company you can trust. Mozilla has a long-standing history of creating privacy-first products that people use and know their information is safe.

The Firefox Relay add-on is available for Firefox, Chrome and Firefox for Android. Try out the free version for yourself!

The post Here is your secret weapon to conquering your overflowing inbox appeared first on The Mozilla Blog.