How to Set Up Email Masking with Your Domain

Server Management
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Email masking is a method of creating alternative email addresses (aliases) that redirect emails to a primary address. These masked emails act as intermediaries, keeping your main email address private. For instance, if your primary email is [email protected], you could use aliases like [email protected] or [email protected] to receive messages while maintaining privacy.

Why Use Email Masking?

Benefits

  • Privacy Protection: Keeps your primary email address hidden, reducing spam and phishing risks.
  • Organization: Use different aliases for specific purposes (e.g., work, subscriptions, support).
  • Easy Revocation: Disable or delete an alias without impacting your main email.
  • Professionalism: Using a custom domain email looks more credible and professional.

Disadvantages

  • Management Overhead: Requires additional setup and periodic maintenance.
  • Dependence on Mail Server Reliability: Aliases depend on your mail server’s forwarding functionality.
  • Potential Spam Forwarding: If an alias is compromised, spam may still reach your primary inbox.

How to Create Email Masking

There are multiple ways to set up email masking, depending on your tools and preferences:

  1. Using a Custom Domain with a Mail Server:

This involves owning a domain like domain.tld and setting up email forwarding through a mail server (e.g., aaPanel, cPanel, or services like Zoho Mail).

  1. Using Email Hosting Services:

Providers like Google Workspace, ProtonMail, and Zoho Mail offer alias creation and forwarding options.

  1. Using Specialized Masking Services:

Services like SimpleLogin and AnonAddy allow users to create and manage masked emails that forward to a primary account.

Example Usage

Imagine you’ve set up [email protected] as your masked email to forward to [email protected].

Step-by-Step: Create Email Masking with a Custom Domain and Mail Server

For this tutorial, I’ll demonstrate how to set up email masking using aaPanel on an Ubuntu 24.04 VPS. The mail server will use Mail Server 5.4.8, installed from the aaPanel app store. We’ll configure a domain domain.tld to forward emails to [email protected].

Here’s how to set up email masking for domain.tld and forward messages to [email protected]:

Prerequisites

  • A VPS running Ubuntu 24.04 with aaPanel installed.
  • Mail Server 5.4.8 installed via aaPanel.
  • Your domain (domain.tld) is already set up on the mail server, and at least one user email is ready (e.g., [email protected]).

Step

  1. Access the Mail Forwarding Feature
  • Log in to aaPanel.
  • Open the Mail Server app from the dashboard.
  • Navigate to the Mail Forward section.
  1. Add a Forwarding Rule
  • Click on the Add Forward button.
  • Fill out the form with the following details:
    • Forwarded users: Enter the email address you want to use as the masked email (e.g., [email protected]).
    • Domain: Select the domain of the forwarded user (e.g., domain.tld).
    • Receiving user: Enter the actual email address where emails should be forwarded (e.g., [email protected]). You can include multiple recipients by separating them with a new line.
  • Save the configuration.
  1. Test the Setup