The wonderful folks at Android Authority previously discovered clues of Google working at a feature called Shielded Email. Essentially, it’s an email alias creator that forwards messages to your main inbox whilst shielding your actual email address, enhancing your privacy. In simple terms, it helps keep your primary email address out of the clutches of spam. Now they’ve managed to enable the user interface, giving us a peek at how it will work.
Here’s your first look at Google’s upcoming Shielded Email (or alias creator)
According to AssembleDebug, this feature will be a part of Google’s Autofill system, the same system that handles Google’s Password Manager. When signing up or logging in to a website, the option to use a Shielded Email alias will appear right alongside your saved accounts. Thankfully, the source has shared some screenshots that give us an early preview of how it will look.
The demo above shows the sign up screen for Amazon. You can see the Use Shielded Email chip appearing right alongside other saved logins. Unfortunately, the feature isn’t up and running yet. Google still needs to enable alias creation on the server side.
Email aliasing is nothing new. Services like Apple’s Hide My Email and Proton’s SimpleLogin do exist. They can be used to fragment your online identity, protecting you from data breaches. I particularly like SimpleLogin’s implementation, which can sync to multiple inboxes and many aliases. Each of them can be individually toggled on and off. Google’s implementation seems simpler than that, but it is still very useful and much easier to use for a larger user base. For now, we’ll have to wait until Google pulls the trigger on the full rollout, and when it does, Shielded Email could become a must-have tool for most users, if not everyone.
