Most of us have at least one email account, but in this day and age, is one email account really enough? That’s one email for everything, and seeing as our email accounts are closely tied to our identities online, it’s less than ideal.
In fact, you might find it makes sense to have more than one email account. From separating our professional and personal identities to ensuring our security and privacy online, the benefits of having multiple email accounts are undeniable.
1. Avoid Getting Spam in Your Primary Inbox With Burner Emails
Spam emails are annoying because they clutter your inbox and make wading through it a hassle. To avoid the stress of dealing with them, create an email account specifically for joining websites, signing in to apps, and signing up for services. That way, spam emails end up in that inbox instead of your primary one, and you don’t need to bother clearing out emails.
If you don’t want to create a separate mailbox for spam emails, you may use adisposable email addressinstead. It’s a temporary mailbox that usually expires within minutes or hours, so you won’t have to worry about receiving pesky emails.
2. Reduce Clutter in Your Primary Inbox
Spam emails aren’t the only things that can clutter up your inbox. When you use one email for everything, it won’t take long until your inbox is filled with thousands of emails. And a full inbox is a messy inbox.
Multiple email accounts allow you toorganize your emails, keeping your primary inbox clutter-free. You can create an email account for work, gaming, payments and subscriptions, registrations, and the sort.
Besides freeing up your primary mailbox, additional email accounts can make it easier to keep track of your emails, like the ones showing your billing history for apps and subscriptions, the ones about work, and the ones about special offers.
3. Improve Your Online Security
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You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” It applies to plenty of things in life, including email accounts.
If you have only one email account, you risk losing everything if something happens to the account, like, say, it becomes compromised. And if you aren’t careful, your email canend up on the dark web. This is why it’s advisable to have a backup email or two.
Having multiple email accounts can keep you safe from cybercriminals. You can create an email account solely for sensitive matters, like cloud storage and bank—and other financial—accounts. As an added measure, enabletwo-factor authentication(2FA).
To take your online security a step further, ensure you use a different,secure passwordfor each email account.
4. Direct Inquiries to a Dedicated Email Account
If you offer a product or service, then you’ll want people to be able to contact you for inquiries. But not through your personal email or even your business one. Instead, it’s best to have an email solely for people to contact you.
Using your business or professional email might seem like a good idea, but it isn’t really. You’ll have inquiry emails filling up your inbox, in addition to professional emails from colleagues, clients, and collaborators.
5. You’ll Appear More Professional With a Dedicated Work-Related Email
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Create an email separate from your primary email strictly for professional business. And make sure it has a professional-sounding name. Use the name of your business or your full name, and save the fun, creative names for personal use.
You can take things up a notch by setting up your email account, so it looks like your emails are coming from a custom domain, like, for instance, yourname@yourdomain.com.
6. Keep Your Work and Personal Identities Separate
Using your main email account for professional correspondence is never a good idea. If you want to appear professional, doing this is something you want to avoid. Why? Because your professional identity and personal identity should never mix.
There’s a risk associated with doing this. If your work and personal emails share an inbox, you might end up making a mistake and sharing sensitive or inappropriate information with the wrong person someday. If this happens, it can have potentially costly legal and professional repercussions, in addition to being embarrassing.
Another reason to keep your work and personal identities separate is that it helps you set boundaries. You can avoid seeing work emails in your inbox during your downtime and avoid getting distracted by personal emails while working.
7. Maintain Your Privacy Online
We all value our privacy, both online and in person. In some ways, online privacy is more vital than physical privacy because there is so much sensitive information concerning us online.
Since our email accounts are tied to our online identity, we should try to maintain our privacy online as much as possible. We can use a dedicated email account or burner email separate from our personal identity to maintain our privacy online.
Having an extra email or two for online privacy purposes is a good idea. You can make these accounts completely separate from your personal email and not include your personal information to remain anonymous and safe online.
Besides setting up an email account for privacy purposes, you can also create an email alias, which conceals your primary email address so no one can tell it’s you when you leave comments on websites and forums.
Improve Your Online Security With Multiple Email Accounts
The online world is a scary place, where many people fall victim to sophisticated phishing attacks every day. How? Mainly through their email accounts. Because emails are closely associated with our personal information, they can be a point of vulnerability for many of us if we aren’t careful.
To be safe, you shouldn’t rely on one email account for all your online business. Instead, create a separate account or two for specific purposes. That way, you greatly diminish your risk while online.
