Private email is fine, actually<br>Buttondown<br>Pricing<br>Log in<br>Build your newsletterSign up

Private email is fine, actually<br>Hide your email, hide your lists

Matthew Guay

August 7, 2026

blockquote>p]:py-2 [&>blockquote>p:only-child]:py-10 prose-blockquote:!px-8 prose-blockquote:not-italic [&>blockquote>p:only-child]:text-center [&>blockquote>p:only-child]:font-bold [&_blockquote_a]:text-current [&_blockquote_a]:underline my-8 mx-auto prose-img:border prose-img:border-border prose-img:rounded-lg prose-img:mx-auto prose-img:transition-colors [&_img.cursor-zoom-in:hover]:border-muted-foreground lg:!max-w-[calc(65ch)] [&_li>code]:inline-block [&_li>code]:px-1.5 [&_li>code]:mx-1.5 [&_li>code]:bg-gray-200 [&_li>code]:before:hidden [&_li>code]:after:hidden [&_li>code]:rounded-md [&_p>code]:px-1.5 [&_p>code]:mx-1.5 [&_p>code]:bg-gray-200 dark:[&_p>code]:bg-zinc-800 dark:[&_p>code]:text-white dark:[&_p>code]:border dark:[&_p>code]:border-zinc-700 dark:[&_p>code]:leading-[32px] [&_p>code]:before:hidden [&_p>code]:after:hidden [&_p>code]:rounded-md [&_p>code]:break-all [&_table]:bg-sidebar [&_table]:-mx-4 [&_table]:border [&_table]:outline-muted [&_table]:outline [&_table]:border-collapse [&_table]:border-solid [&_table]:mx-auto [&_table]:my-8 [&_table]:overflow-hidden [&_table]:rounded-lg [&_table]:shadow-md [&_table]:text-md [&_table]:w-full [&_td>p]:my-1.5 [&_td]:!px-4 [&_td]:font-system [&_th>p]:my-1.5 [&_th]:!p-2 [&_th]:text-sm [&_th]:!px-4 [&_th]:bg-card [&_th]:text-left [&_thead]:border-border [&_tr]:border-border break-words prose-a:text-blue-600 [&_a:hover]:bg-blue-500/20 prose-hr:mb-14 prose-hr:border-border prose-hr:mx-20 dark:prose-strong:text-white dark:prose-headings:text-foreground dark:text-foreground [&_small>p]:text-sm [&_small_thead]:hidden [&_small_td:last-child]:text-right [&_.caption]:text-sm [&_.caption]:text-muted-foreground [&_.caption]:text-center [&_.caption]:mt-8 [&_.caption]:-mb-4">The best way to keep your inbox tidy, to ensure your email address remains private, to guarantee you never receive another message from a specific sender if needed, is to use a private email address.<br>You’re [email protected] to friends; to everyone else, you’re [email protected] or [email protected]. If a spammer starts sending to the 123 address, well, you can just delete it. Your original email address is still safe and sound. It’s the same concept as virtual credit card numbers for online shopping, only even more disposable.<br>Private email addresses are everywhere today, baked into Firefox and iPhones and more. Long gone are the days when they were the domain of slightly sketchy services, of sites with too many banner ads and the feeling that maybe you were doing something shady to need such a service. You had a perfectly good email address; why not just use that one?<br>Why not, indeed, when over 78 million email addresses were breached in June 2026 alone, from the likes of Sysco, Edmunds, JCPenny, and the University of Nottingham’s databases?<br>We’d argue it’s worth masquerading your email address if you’re not 100% certain about a service—and it might be worth doing even if your confidence isn’t in doubt. And we’d argue if you’re running a newsletter (or app, or anything else with a signup flow), you shouldn’t worry about the growing numbers of anonymous-seeming addresses in your subscriber list, especially if they’re from reasonable-seeming domains.<br>Odds are, they’re not bots. They’re people, slightly concealed. And that’s fine.<br>Private, but not necessarily anonymous<br>The original idea for private email addresses was, well, privacy. Email addresses tend to wear your identity overtly, with [email protected] or similar remixes with first name or last initial being the most common email address style. Easy to remember, easy to share, and, well, easy to demask if you’d rather keep your name private when emailing (especially when your email header includes your name, too).<br>“Anonymous on-line speech serves many purposes ranging from fighting oppressive government censorship to giving university professors feedback on teaching,” wrote David Mazieres, then-MIT student and current Stanford Professor of Computer Science, in a 1998 paper about one of the earliest ways to masquerade email addresses.<br>Two years prior one of the earliest apps to hide your email, the Penet remailer, had been shut down after a battle with the Church of Scientology. That app worked much like similar services today: You’d claim a pseudonymous email address, and it’d forward messages to your real inbox. Simple enough, until it was compromised during the second DefCon hacker convention, then received an Interpol search warrant and was forced to hand over a user’s real email address when Scientology wanted to find out who’d posted on a Usenet newsgroup with a Penet address. Wired called it “the day that Internet anonymity first came in conflict with the law — and lost.” When Scientology came knocking again with the long arm of the law, Penet developer...