Learning the Basics: The Emailias Quick-Start Guide

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• How do you say "Emailias"?
• General Background
• What is an Emailias?
• Why use an Emailias?
• Reply-Masking
• Pop-up Window & Click, Copy, Go!
• Automatic Emailias-Webpage Association
• Types of Emailiases
• Standard Emailiases
• Friend Emailiases
• Pair Emailiases
• Basic Terms & Concepts in Emailias
• Emailias
• Targets
• Basic vs. Advanced User Mode
• Folders
• Presets
• Emailias Expiration
• Email Header Controls
• Getting Started

Before we get into what "Emailias" is, it'd be good to know how to say it!

The word "Emailias" is a combination of the words "Email" and "Alias". Emailias is pronounced email-ias. Email is pronounced as you'd expect and ias (as in "alias") is added to the end.

Once you can say it smoothly, you can sing it to the tune of the "Aquarius":
  "This is the dawning of the age of Emailias!"

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Emailias.com is a technological solution to addressing unwanted spam. It is a way to quickly create and conveniently manage an unlimited number of email address "aliases". You create and give an alias addresses to an online vendor instead of your personal email address.

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The address alias (or emailias) is a two-way email proxy to your real email address. Any email that an online vendor sends to an emailias is immediately forwarded to your personal email address, allowing you to read all email normally. You can reply to emails sent through an emailias because of a technology we call "Reply-Masking".

An emailias is an important tool for privacy protection. Emailiases are extremely easy and efficient to create or delete. We encourage you to create a new emailias for every contact that you have with online vendors. Since they can only contact you through an emailias, you can easily decide to stop communications with them by deleting that one emailias. Any time that you start receiving junk mail through a particular emailias, you know exactly who you gave that emailias to, which means that they either sold or shared your information, or it was stolen from them. In any case, you can stop that junk mail by deleting that one emailias.

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Emailias uses a technique called "encrypted reply-masking" to help protect your identity but still allow you to reply to emails. When you use your mail reader to reply to an email that came through an emailias, the email's envelope information is changed to appear like it came from your emailias, instead of from your personal email address. This keeps your personal email address private, and allows you to communicate with the online vendor as if the emailias were your personal email address.

You do not need to do anything special to use reply-masking. It happens automatically when you use an emailias instead of your personal email address.

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The power of Emailias lies in the convenience with which you can create an emailias. Using a common supported browser , we show you how to put a button on your browser to create an emailias. Since the button is integrated to your browser, it is always available when you are surfing the Internet.

"Click, Copy, Go!" is our fast and easy way to create a new emailias. When you come across a web page that asks for your email address, simply click on the "New Emailias!" browser button and a pop-up window will appear. This pop-up window contains a new emailias that is already configured to your account defaults (i.e. it already knows where to forward all email that it receives). Just copy the emailias from the pop-up window to the web page that is asking for your address. That's it! You're done! Go on your way! Any emails that the website sends to your emailias will be automatically forwarded to and received at your personal email address, just like any other email.

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When you create an emailias using the pop-up window, the emailias is automatically associated with the web page that you were viewing. This means that if you ever go back to any page on that website, you can click on the "New Emailias!" browser button and we will remind you that you already have an emailias created for that website. You'll then have the choice of re-using that same emailias or creating another new emailias.

This feature is helpful for websites that use your email address as a login ID for their site.

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In the pop-up window, there is a control that sets the emailias type.

Standard Emailiases

By default, a "Standard" emailias is created. This means that it is an emailias for you, that will send email to your personal email address.

Friend Emailiases

Emailias also lets you create a "Friend" emailias. A Friend emailias is one that allows you to forward an email to the address of a friend. You would create a Friend emailias whenever you want to have a website send an email to a friend.

Being the considerate friend that you are, you would use Friend emailiases to protect your friend's email addresses, just like you use emailiases to protect your own address. This means that if the website decides to sell your friend's address, then they're only selling an emailias (which can be turned off), and not their actual personal email address. They'll thank you for that! A Friend emailias is actually only useful for one email. One the website sends an email to an Friend emailias, that emailias is deleted. This means that the website really can't sell the address at all--it doesn't work any more! This lets you get the information to your friend, but keeps the website from being able to abuse that email address later.

Pair Emailiases

The last emailias type is a "Pair". The Pair is actually just a convenient way to create a Standard and a Friend emailias at the same time. This is convenient way to create a "To" and "From" pair of addresses for websites that require two addresses. Online greeting card sites frequently require two addresses: who the card is from, and who the card is to.

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The following sections describe the few basic terms and concepts in Emailias that will help you to best understand and use the Emailias website.

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We've already introduced the term Emailias, but it is repeated here for your convenience. The Emailias is an email address alias that relays email to a personal email address. An emailais is given to a website instead of the personal email address to keep that personal address private and controlled.

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A "Target" is a personal email address that receives email that is relayed through an Emailias. Your personal email address is a Target. You must have at least one Target in your Emailias account. You may register more than one Target, but an emailias will only relay email to one Target.

There are two types of Targets: "Normal" and "Good Friend".

A Normal Target is an email address that you own. Normal Targets must be validated. An email is sent to a Normal Target when you enter the new address into your account. You must be able to receive that email and use the information in it to "validate" your Target. Only "validated" Targets may be used to receive email relayed by an emailias.

A Good Friend Target is a personal address of a friend. You may create a Good Friend Target, but you may only use that Target for Friend emailiases. You don't need to create a Good Friend Target to create Friend emailiases (you can just enter the friend's address when you create the Friend emailias). The Good Friend Target just lets you save friend's addresses in your account that you frequently create emailiase for.

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Before we get into "Folders", "Presets" and "Expiration", we'll discuss Basic vs. Advanced User Mode. The User Mode is a way to simplify the interface. Much of the power of Emailias can be used in Basic User Mode, but there are a few features that many people will find helpful to better use the Emailias website.

Basic User Mode exists to keep the website interface simple. As a person becomes more familiar with the terms and concepts of Emailias, they will probably use the Advanced User Mode. In Basic User Mode, you will use the following concepts (described above):

• Emailiases
• Targets
• Basic Folders

Advanced User Mode has more functionality that allows a user to better organize their emailiases and have more control over their Emailiases. As a person becomes more familiar the concepts inteh Basic User Mode, they will more easily understand the following concepts in the Advanced User Mode:

• Advanced Folders
• Presets
• Emailias Expiration
• Email Header Controls

A Folder is a way to organize emailiases. Most operating systems today (Microsoft Windows, Macintosh) organize files into "folders". In this way, a Emailias Folder groups similar emailiases together. In Basic User Mode, there are three folders:

• My Emailiases
• Friend
• Disabled

My Emailiases

The "My Emailiases" folder contains all "Standard" Emailiases that you create. You may quickly discover that you'd like to create other folders to better organize your Emailiases into groups (i.e Shopping, Newsletters, Websavers). You can create other folders only in Advanced User Mode.

Friend Folder

The "Friend" Folder contains all Friend Emailiases that you create. Remember that Friend Emailiases are only good for one email, so they may get deleted from this folder fairly quickly after they're created. You may not rename or move Emailiases into or out of this folder.

Disabled Folder

The "Disabled" Folder is a special folder that contains Emailiases that are currently "Disabled". The disabled Emailiases really aren't "in" this folder, but this folder is a convenient way to see only the disabled Emailiases (the Emailias is still contained in the folder that it was created for). If you understand database theory, this folder is like a "view" into the disabled Emailiases of all other folders.

Other Folders

Using Advanced User Mode, you can create sub-folders of the "My Emailiases" folder to help organize your Emailiases. You are not limited to any number of Folders, and you can always create more sub-folders within sub-folders.

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Firstly, think of the "Presets" on your car radio. By clicking on one of the presets, the radio automatically changes to a new radio station that you've already specified. Some of the fancier radios even change the bass/treble settings for the music type. In any case, you can choose the settings that will result for when you press that button in the future.

An Emailias "Preset" is a way of grouping settings together. For an Emailias, you can specify many settings: its Target, Folder, any expiration information. You can create a Preset to group your favorite settings into a single button-click. For example, you may create a Preset named "Shopping 1 Week", which means: use my home Target, store the Emailias in my "Shopping" Folder, and delete the Emamilias after 1 Week.

Presets are only available in Advanced User Mode. They are convenient to keep track of bunch of Emailiases that always have the same settings. So, if you want to change the Target for all Emailiases using your "Shopping" Preset, then you just have to change the Target for the Preset, instead of changing the Target on each individual Emailias.

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In Advanced User Mode, there is "Emailias Expiration". This is a way for you to specify how long an Emailias should exist. You've already seen an example of "expiration" with the Friend Emailias, which gets deleted after one email has been relayed.

There are two basic types of expiration: Disable or Delete. An Emailias that is "disabled" still exists in your account but does not forward the email to its Target. Any email that is sent to a disabled Emailias appears (to the sender) that it was received normally. This may be useful if you want to keep an email address for an online shopping website, but don't want to receive all of the junk mail that they send out between your orders. An Emailias that is "deleted" is removed from your account. Any email that is sent to that emailias gets bounced back to the sender, telling them that the email address is no longer valid. If you receive junk mail from a website, you may be just annoyed enough that you'll never want email from them again. In this case, you can delete the address, and they'll never be able to send you email again (unless you give them another emailias later).

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The emails that are relayed through an Emailias have an "Emailias Header" inserted at the top of the message. This done for a few reasons. Often, when an email is sent from a website, it is sent to a bunch of recipients using the "Bcc" header, which means that your email address isn't listed in the recipients list. Therefore, you may not be able to tell how they sent the email to you. The header that we put at the top of your email message contains the Emailias that they used to send the email to you. We also include a link to the properties page for the Emailias, so that you can easily make notes, change settings for the Emailias, or delete it (if you like). In Advanced User Mode, you may specify the information that you'd like to have included in this Email Header. You may even choose to have no email header inserted at all. For technical reasons, some emails may not be able to have the header inserted, but we try our best.

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Here's what you'll need to do to get started using Emailias:

1. Click Here to Create an Account... (Opens a new Window)
2. Click Here to Add the "New Emailias" Button to your Browser... (Opens a new Window)