Protect your inbox from data exploitation:
How Minmail's profiles and routing keep your personal information safe
Data exploitation
It’s estimated that anywhere from 45% to a whopping 80% of all emails sent daily are spam. Among them are malware and phishing attacks, which are incredibly common and on the increase. The vast majority of services require us to provide an email address, but data breaches and other forms of data exploitation (e.g. selling email addresses and other customer data) are also on the rise. Given that most people use the same email account (and even password!) across a multitude of services, a breach at just one of them can compromise several others.
Open-door
Any half-decent email provider will try to filter bogus senders and spam, but they typically have an open-door policy. As long as someone is sending through a common provider, like Gmail or Mailbox, or are sending from a reasonably configured mail server, they’ll be able to get into your inbox. Email in its common form was not designed to protect against unsolicited emails or email harassment. Blocking an email address is a superficial fix to a more fundamental problem.
Minmail = minimal mail
The way we use email needs to change. Using the same one or two email addresses for everything is a risk. Just as we realized that reusing a single password for multiple accounts makes us incredibly vulnerable to hackers, using a single email address for all people, services and purposes leaves us surprisingly vulnerable to data exploitation.
Minmail was born out of a need to combat email exploitation.
People, services and purposes
At the heart of Minmail is selectivity. Instead of the common “open-door” policy most email services embrace, Minmail gives you complete control through profiles and routing. Between these two features, you gain a powerful way to select who can reach your inbox, and via which email addresses.
Profiles
Profiles have their own email address, display name and even contacts. They’re not superficial labels (like Gmail) or aliases (like many alias email services). Each profile is almost like having a separate account. The difference is you only need one account to have multiple profiles.
Routing
The power of Minmail’s profiles really becomes apparent when it’s combined with selective routing. In Minmail, contacts belong to specific profiles. A profile can automatically reject all messages from anyone who hasn’t been pre-approved to send to its address. A profile can also have looser restrictions allowing screening of first-time senders.
Minmail in the real world
Minmail’s profiles and routing make it possible to create profiles for very specific uses. A simple example would be personal and professional profiles (e.g. for your work or business). The personal profile could be locked to specific contacts (friends, family), while your professional profile could be less restricted so that peers, customers, recruiters, etc. can still reach you.
A common use of profiles is when signing up for new services. Instead of using your core email address, you’d create a new custom or random alias specifically for that service. Once approved, only they would be able to send to you on that alias. If someone else happened to get hold of that alias address, they would either be rejected or would have to get past screening before their mail could reach your inbox.
Protect your inbox
Email is a critical tool for communication and collaboration, but it also exposes us to the risks of data exploitation and harassment. The traditional “open-door” policy of most email services makes it easy for spammers and phishers to reach our inboxes, and the reuse of email addresses across multiple services can compromise our personal information if just one of them is breached.
Minmail offers a solution to these problems by giving users complete control over who can reach their inboxes through the use of profiles and routing. By creating profiles for specific people, services, and purposes, and using selective routing to screen and filter incoming messages, Minmail helps protect users against data exploitation and unwanted emails.
Stay tuned.
