What stays the same

Both choices can receive legitimate mail. Neither guarantees anonymity, trustworthy senders or secure accounts. You still need unique authentication and a dependable recovery plan.

What changes

With a separate address, you can apply this principle: give each important relationship a labelled, controllable address. With one address everywhere, one exposed address becomes a durable link between unrelated accounts. The value is containment rather than invisibility.

A separate route changes the size of the clean-up.

How to choose

Use the simpler option when the consequence is small and the relationship is short. Choose stronger separation when recovery, public exposure or cross-context matching would matter.

  • Name the relationship
  • Choose a suitable lifetime
  • Store it with the account
  • Review it when the relationship changes

The honest caveat

An alias separates the address, not every other identifier a service collects. Make the decision for the risk you actually have, not the most dramatic risk you can imagine.

Give the next relationship its own route.

Create an MXDuck alias