New Firefox Add-On Will Generate Disposable Email for Online Forms and Websites

Have you ever submitted your email address on a website and started receiving unwanted spam emails? Of course, you have! Every one of us has faced this problem and continue to face this problem. We submit our email address to register on a website or to fill some online forms and lo and behold we start receiving unwanted promotional messages, sometimes straight-up spams. The unsubscribe button also does nothing sometimes. Mozilla is experimenting with a new add-on for the Firefox browser that aims to solve this very problem.

Mozilla is calling it the Firefox Private Relay. What this new add-on does is that whenever you are asked to submit your email address on a website that you do not trust, it can generate a disposable email address that is linked to your real email ID. So the new email address is an alias to your real email and relays every email you receive on the temporary email.

“By using aliases, you keep your real email off spam lists and away from sketchy companies, you may not trust,” Mozilla says on the Private Relay website.

According to ZDNet, the Private Relay entered testing last month and is currently in a closed beta program. ZDNet notes that a public beta is currently scheduled for later this year.

Whenever you feel like not sharing your real email address, you can click on the Private Relay add-on button, and firefox will create a disposable email address for you. This email address relays every email from your disposable email to your real email inbox. When you feel like any particular alias is receiving unwanted emails, you can simply disable that alias or delete it completely. This way, the spam website won’t know your real email, and the spamming also stops.

“If any alias starts to receive emails you don’t want, you can disable it or delete it completely,” Mozilla noted on its website.

Using disposable email address or alias email IDs to prevent spamming is no new concept. But instead managing those alias and temporary emails has always been a challenge. There was no 1-click solution for this until now. I am personally super excited to try this new feature. Please expect an article from me when this goes live for normal users.