Email Is the Oldest Surveillance Tool on the Internet
Every time you sign up for a new account, buy something online, or download an app, the first thing they ask for isn’t your name — it’s your email address.
That address is your passport through the digital world, but it’s also a tracking beacon. It’s static, permanent, and predictable. Once tied to you, it becomes the foundation for a profile that corporations, data brokers, and governments can build upon indefinitely.
You can change your password, even your physical address. But you probably never change your email. That’s why it’s so valuable to the data brokers.
How They Collect Data
Most people assume tracking happens through cookies or phone apps. In reality, the email address is more powerful than either. It’s not confined to a browser. It’s the one field every company demands.
Even when companies claim to “anonymize” or “hash” your address, that hash still acts as a fingerprint. Once it’s matched in a few databases — say, from a retailer, a streaming service, and a bank — you’re mapped. That map doesn’t disappear.
They know what you buy, what time you’re awake, how often you move, and what political newsletters you read.
Breaking the Link
There’s a simple way to make this system less effective: stop giving everyone the same key.
The tactic is called email segmentation — or, more practically, creating semi-anonymous addresses. It’s not about disappearing; it’s about denying centralization.
Instead of using one permanent address, you create many — each one tied to a specific category of your life.
health@domainhere.comfor medical loginsfinance@domainhere.comfor bankingshop@domainhere.comfor purchasestemp@domainhere.comfor throwaway accounts
While I just put in domainhere.com for the domain name, I suggest using protonmail.com for these addresses.
To an outsider, these addresses look unrelated. To you, they’re compartments — digital firebreaks that stop data from flowing freely between companies.
Segment your activities
Tracking is correlation. Break the correlation, and you break the profile.
If Amazon knows shop@domainhere.com but Netflix only knows stream@domainhere.com, no single broker can cleanly merge those records without guessing. Each alias forces them to start over.
That doesn’t make you invisible, but it makes you expensive to track, and that’s the point. Mass surveillance depends on scale. Anything that adds friction erodes the business model.
Beyond the Alias
Email is just one vector. The metadata around it — IP address, device type, screen resolution — completes the picture. You can reduce this by:
- Blocking remote content and tracking pixels.
- Using privacy-first browsers with isolation features (Brave is one example).
- Compartmentalizing accounts into separate browser profiles or virtual machines.
- Never accessing these email addresses from your phone at all.
- When you do access them on your computer always use TOR or VPN.
These are not paranoid practices. They’re the digital equivalent of closing your blinds.
The Real Question
The argument that “I have nothing to hide” misunderstands privacy entirely. The point isn’t secrecy. It’s control.
When you can’t control who collects, stores, or sells your information, you lose autonomy over your own identity. That loss accumulates invisibly — in insurance rates, credit decisions, targeted manipulation, and political profiling.
The email address you created in 2008 might still be feeding that system today, and if you still actively use it for signups, you can easily be profiled by data brokers.
A Few Closing Notes
First, don't add or access any of these emails from your phone. It bleeds information. Wait until you are on the computer using a VPN or TOR, if you are using protonmail.
If you are already on tor, here's the link: https://protonmailrmez3lotccipshtkleegetolb73fuirgj7r4o4vfu7ozyd.onion/ - Obviously, this won't work if you're directly connected to your normal internet.
Second, don't put identifiers into your email addresses. Putting something like "shopping.johndoe@domainhere.com" would make it a lot easier to follow this user. Even more so if you put some string of unique letters and numbers, such as "shopping.abc123" where you always used abc123 in your email address. My suggestion is to randomize part of the address, making it different lengths and different random characters every time. "shopping.1fg3a" for one, and "home5hg3gbd" for another, without the period. You don't want to do anything that might be anticipated or easy to connect.
Third, you may even have multiple addresses in the same category. You might (read as "should") want to give walmart it's own email address since they are assumed to be one of the worst data brokers aside from Google and Facebook.