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Anything wrong with using my real name in email aliases with organizations I have to communicate using my real identity anyway? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago by TheTwelveYearOld@lemmy.world to c/privacyguides@lemmy.one
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One example would be state disability programs, they already need my real name and identity to work with me. Are there any downsides to sharing a simplelogin alias containing my real name vs no containing my real name? I just think it would be easier record keeping for them.

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[-] hedgehog@ttrpg.network 14 points 1 month ago

The main disadvantage I can think of would involve a situation where your email (and possibly also other personal data) was exposed without your name attached. It’d be possible for your DLN and/or SSN (or the equivalents for other countries) and email to be exposed without your name being exposed, for example. This wouldn’t have to be a breach - it could be that, for privacy purposes, certain people working with accounts simply don’t get visibility to names.

It’s also feasible that an employee might have access to your full name but only to partially masked email addresses. So if your email is site-firstname-lastname@example.com and they see site-firstname-****@domain.com, they can make an educated guess as to your full email address.

Also, if your email were exposed by itself and someone tried to phish you, it would be more effective if they knew your name.

[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 11 points 1 month ago

I think it's good practice to have your real name in professional / business email addresses.

[-] Papanca@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

I use aliases, because so many databases get security breaches. To a certain extent, i may need to trust the people who i share my name with, but i don't trust their security measures.

[-] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 month ago

Tracking just sender/recipient needs way less storage than saving entire mails, HTML, Images etc.

So if you have your name in the address, and you communicate with shit servers, it will be saved for sure.

If not, then maybe not.

[-] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 month ago

Data protection policies might be different, as well. ProtonMail, for example, uses end-to-end encryption for email bodies, but does not encrypt metadata, which includes the sender, recipient, and the rest of the email headers.

[-] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago

This is standard PGP but kind of done automatically as people are lazy. And Thunderbird could be better, AND there is no maintained PGP on Android?

this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2024
30 points (100.0% liked)

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