You might have heard the idiom: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” This centuries-long wisdom extends to modern digital practices, such as avoiding password reuse or managing a single email address. The latter is the focus of this article, and it explains why using a single email address increases the risk of being hacked or compromised through phishing or other deceptive messages. 

Too many email addresses: chaos? 

Many people avoid creating and using multiple email addresses because it’s more challenging to maintain and check each one. This struggle is fair, and you might need to visit various inboxes to ensure that you don’t miss any important correspondence. 

Luckily, apps like Apple Mail and Outlook allow you to combine multiple email inboxes into one. If this is not an option, Gmail also lets you sign into multiple accounts and quickly switch between them as needed. For more high-tech options, you can use aliases, filters, forward messages to your primary email, or even set up your own domain to run as an email hosting service. 

Clear reasons for using multiple email addresses

With the chaos argument out of the way, let’s shift to concrete reasoning behind using multiple email addresses. The following situations and examples should be enough to prompt you to create a new email account.

Joining a new service

Sometimes, you might want to use a separate email address for new services. For example, you have decided to join a reliable money earning app, but don’t want to use your primary email address for this. 

Instead, you can use the other, less important email address to become a member. Services like JumpTask (a get-paid-to app) let you sign up via Google, Facebook, or Apple, which is worth considering. Still, you might want to keep your emails from JumpTask in a separate inbox, particularly when you are in the mood for getting paid for performing various virtual tasks (so-called microjobs).

Avoiding the clutter

If you use your primary email for newsletters, subscriptions, and online stores, your inbox is constantly overflowing. Multiple accounts, all separated by their purpose (more on this later), have the benefit of: 

• Letting you delete emails from the less important inbox without worrying about missing something important. 
• Your primary email inbox remains clean and organized, with essential letters not disappearing in the list of random messages.
• You are more immune to scams if you don’t use the targeted email for that particular service (the scammers are attempting to impersonate). 

Fewer security risks

You might wonder how exactly multiple email addresses improve your security. For one, it ensures that your primary email address is less vulnerable to data breaches. For example, let’s say you use one email address for everything, and a random online service suffers a data breach, exposing email addresses and passwords in plain form. 

When hackers obtain this information, their first step is to attempt to take over accounts. So, if you use the same password everywhere, this data leakage could leave your inbox completely vulnerable. If you use a different password, hackers will still likely add your email address as a recipient of future scams.

How many email addresses do you need?

At this point, you might already be convinced you need multiple email addresses. But how many? There’s no single correct answer, as it depends on your needs. Let’s observe a familiar situation: 

• One email address is for important messages from your school, government institutions, and other organizations. 
• The second email address is for managing subscriptions and online shopping. 
• The third email address is for joining new services you want to test. 
• The fourth email address is for your side hustle or another revenue stream. 

One of the main aspects here is to keep your essential email messages away from others. Set up immediate notifications for these messages so you can check them promptly. If you’re struggling to remember all of the passwords, use a password manager tool. Then, you have all of them readily available and automatically filled whenever you want to log in.

What about a temporary email service?

Besides recognizing the benefits of multiple email addresses, you should also know when a temporary email service could be handy. Such an email address is not a permanent option you will continue to use for years. Instead, it is a short-term solution when you need an email address, but don’t want to use yours or create a new one. 

Temporary email addresses are excellent when you need that extra security and privacy. Then, the service you choose masks your email address, making it harder for others to identify you. 

Conclusion

Sometimes, more is more, and having less is not the best option. Take time creating multiple email addresses to ensure that your digital (and real) life stays organized. For the best results, we recommend using one personal email address, one online shopping email address, and one random email address to cover most of your needs.