Why your alias provider should not rewrite your mail
15 July 2026 · 4 min read
A forwarder sits between the sender and you. It can add footers, rewrite links for click tracking, strip attachments, or reformat HTML. Each is a decision made on your behalf about mail you have not read yet.
The practical cost
- Rewritten links mean the forwarder sees every link you click.
- Any body change breaks the sender’s DKIM signature.
- Reformatting can hide the tells that would have shown you a phish.
A forwarder that passes the original bytes through gives you the message the sender wrote, with their signature intact so your provider can still check it. TMailr adds two trace headers and changes nothing else, which is why a signed message still verifies after it passes through.
More on privacy
Most disposable email is not private at all
On many throwaway-mail sites, anyone who types your address can read your inbox. That is not a bug in those products, it is how they are built.
What a masked email alias actually does
An alias is not a second mailbox. It is a valve on your real one, and understanding the difference tells you when it helps and when it does not.
Plus addressing: useful, and easier to strip than you think
you+shop@gmail.com is a fine way to label mail and a poor way to hide anything.