Brave has added an email alias feature to its desktop browser, giving users a way to sign up for websites without handing over their primary email address. The new Email Aliases feature generates separate addresses that forward messages to a user’s normal inbox, with the aim of reducing spam and making an email address less useful for tracking activity across different sites.
Email Aliases is available starting with Brave 1.94 on desktop. The initial release includes up to five free aliases, while mobile support and a paid version are planned for later.
The feature is built directly into website email fields. After setting it up, users can click an email field to generate an alias or choose “New Email Alias” from the right-click menu. The website receives the generated address, while messages sent to it are forwarded to the user’s primary inbox.
Users can deactivate an alias if it starts receiving unwanted mail and create another instead.
Why hiding an email address can improve privacy
Browser privacy tools can block or isolate many forms of tracking, including third-party cookies and trackers embedded on webpages. An email address presents a different problem because companies can use it as a persistent identifier outside the browser.
For example, a website can collect an email address during a purchase and later provide that address to an advertising platform for customer matching. If the platform already associates the same address with an existing account, it may be able to connect activity from the website with that user. Because such matching can take place between companies’ servers, conventional browser-based tracker blocking cannot necessarily prevent it.
Using a different alias for websites makes that type of direct email matching more difficult because the site does not receive the user’s primary address. It can also limit the exposure of a primary email address if a service later suffers a data breach.
A Brave Account is required
Using Email Aliases requires a new Brave Account, which is separate from the account used to manage Brave Premium subscriptions such as the company’s VPN service.
The email address registered with the Brave Account becomes the destination for forwarded messages. Brave says its account system uses the OPAQUE authentication protocol, which is designed so that the user’s password is not sent to Brave’s servers.
Brave does store the primary email address and aliases needed to provide the forwarding service, with that data encrypted at rest. According to the company, it does not read forwarded email content, although messages are processed for standard spam and virus filtering. Once successfully delivered, emails are deleted from its servers within seconds.
Notes that users attach to aliases are stored locally. If Brave Sync is enabled, those notes can be synchronized between devices using end-to-end encryption.
Aliases can be viewed and managed under Settings > Autofill & Passwords > Email Aliases.
There is one early limitation beyond the five-alias cap: Brave warns that some forwarded messages may initially be incorrectly routed to spam while the service establishes its reputation as an email provider. The company recommends marking those messages as not spam when this occurs.
Email Aliases is currently limited to Brave’s desktop browser. Brave says it is working on bringing the feature to mobile and intends to introduce a Premium version in the future.
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