Microsoft today launched a new feature on Hotmail that I think will change the way we hand out our email address to websites across the internet. Many people who are technically savy have for many years created 2 or more email addresses for themselves. One might be a personal address and one a business or address or more commonly, one is an email address for people and websites they trust and the other one is for people and websites they don't trust. These secondary addresses are somtimes known as disposable addresses, because if they become too spammy and bogged down with unwanted addresses, they just delete them and create a new clean one. Microsoft has just taken this concept and made it into something that anyone with a Hotmail address can set up in a couple of minutes. It's called Email Alias.
The concept is simple. You click a button in your Hotmail account, choose a new email address and choose a folder from your current hotmail account for all the mail that goes to this new address to be dumped into. That way all your mail still ends up in the same hotmail account and you don't have to manage several different email accounts, but you don't have to give your main email address to every website or person, especially those you don't trust. If this alias account starts to get spam or unwanted mail delivered to it, you can simply remove it and those messages won't been seen again.
What's great is how easy it is to add an Email Alias to your current Hotmail account. Start by signing into Hotmail and going to your Inbox. Hover your mouse over the Inbox item just above the folder list on the left until you see the little gear symbol appear and then click on that gear. Then simple pick "Create a Hotmail Alias" from the menu that appears.
You then choose an email address that you would like to use to as the alias. This can be any email address, as long as it isn;'t taken by somebody obviously. Then click the Create An Alias button.
Finally you'll be returned to your Inbox with one final question. Hotmail will offer to automatically create a folder for mail that is sent to that alias to be delivered into. You can create a new folder, choose an existing folder or simply just let the mail go straight to your normal Inbox by clicking Skip This Step.
That's it. You've created an Email Alias. Apparently you are allowed to create 5 of these per year, up to 15 in total (as not to take up all the email addresses on Hotmail I suspect). I think it's an excellent feature and one that Microsoft should be given a lot of credit for. It won't be long until Gmail copies this feature I suspect!
