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 proportionate address choices, you can apply this principle: choose controls according to recovery need, exposure, impact and effort. With maximum secrecy everywhere, treating every signup as equally dangerous creates a system nobody maintains. 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 what matters
  • Estimate likely harm
  • Choose a proportionate route
  • Review when circumstances change

The honest caveat

The strongest theoretical setup fails if it is too complicated to use. 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