There is a good chance that you have read about the problem of Matt Honan who was hacked by individuals who used social engineering to do it. One of the things that Matt admitted was he used the same email address for everything and in terms of security that might not have been a good idea. Are there times when you are purchasing something from someone, maybe on Craigslist or through a site you are not familiar with and they ask for your email address. You are reluctant to give it too them, perhaps you give them what I call a junk email address, an email address that you specifically set up to give to online merchants. That is what I do, this works until you forget that is the email you gave them and you are wondering why you didn’t get that package you ordered and there is an email sitting in your alternative folder saying the item is out of stock. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to give out a fake email so you could get the information you need and then delete that email address and never worry about hearing from them again. That is one of the ideas behind Gli.ph

The first thing that you will need to do is sign up on the Gli.ph service and download the app on your iPhone. If you are using an Android phone you will have to use the mobile web app  for creating the cloaked email address. At the upper left hand corner of the app or mobile Web site you will see a figure that looks like a wizard, click on it. If you haven’t already done so you will need to confirm your email address. At that point you will be given a cloaked email address. When you are ready to send someone an email, just click on send cloaked email. There is the space for recipient, subject and message. To start off with there is no way to add an attachment, you earn that right by getting five of your friends to join Gli.ph. Ones you are done, hit the send button. The receiver will see your cloaked email address. Their reply will first go to the cloaked email address and then be forward to your real email address. This is where the real magic comes in now you can reply to their email through your actual email client and address and the recipient will only see your cloaked email address. Gli.ph will strip out all information that gives away your real email address from the header. Once you are finished communicating with the person or site, simply delete the cloaked email address. Now when they try to send you an email through that address it simply disappears into space. Gli.ph uses HMAC-SHA1 hashes, and stores cloaked Email addresses encrypted using the same AES–256 encryption. They do not store or see the email when it goes through them. It lives only in memory during the time it is passing through.

Right now the biggest complaint I have against Gli.ph is that on Android you have to use the mobile Web site to create a cloaked email address. On iOs you can do it directly on the application. Other than that I really like Gli.ph, their have been several times when I have been reluctant to give someone my real email address and now I don’t have to.