Brave will hand websites a fake email address so you can keep your real one

Your email address is the thread that ties everything together. It is how a shop, an advertiser and a breach dump all work out they are looking at the same person. Brave's answer, shipped on 27 August in desktop version 1.94, is to stop handing it over.

Email Aliases makes up a throwaway address on the spot, either from the autofill drop-down when you click into a sign-up box or from the right-click menu. Anything sent to it forwards to your real inbox. When a retailer starts mailing you three times a day, or its customer list ends up somewhere it should not, you switch that single alias off and the noise stops dead. The free tier gives you five; a paid tier is planned. You need one of Brave's new accounts, which sign in using a protocol called OPAQUE, meaning your password is never sent to Brave's servers at all. Brave says your real address and your aliases are stored encrypted, and forwarded messages are wiped from its servers within seconds.

Two caveats before you rely on it. This is desktop only for now, with mobile promised. And because the forwarding domain is brand new, some early messages will land in spam while Brave builds a sending reputation, so check the junk folder for the first few weeks.

None of this is a new idea. Apple's Hide My Email and services like SimpleLogin have done it for years. What has changed is that it now sits in a free browser, one click from the form you are already filling in. Use aliases for newsletters, shopping and one-off downloads, and keep your real address for banking, government and anything where losing access would hurt. If you have never mapped out which addresses and sign-ins your PC is actually tied to, Tendvane's Privacy and accounts check is the quickest way to see that list.