You’re more valuable than you probably realise.
Not because you’re a good person, and not because you enrich the lives of those around you (though you are and you do).
No, the reason you’re so surprisingly valuable is that you’re an absolute goldmine of data. Every time you go online, every time you pick up your phone, every time you enter your details into a form, data pours from you like truffle spores.
Your name, your address, your email, your passwords, your social media interactions, your online browsing habits.
Big deal, you might be thinking. Nothing bad has happened so far. But you’re one piece of bad luck away from all kinds of trouble, from the minor inconvenience of getting too much spam to the straight up horror of being stalked, doxxed, and defrauded.
Fortunately, you can avoid this trouble by getting yourself an alternative ID.
Even more fortunately, privacy specialist Surfshark has created a product that’s literally called Alternative ID.
Before we get into the nitty gritty of how Alternative works, let’s look at some of the problems it’s designed to solve.
Spam
Chances are, you’ll find yourself giving away your email address on a daily basis, whether shopping online, signing up for a trial subscription, entering an online contest, registering for guest wi-fi access, signing up for a newsletter to receive a discount, commenting in a forum, or whatever.
The autofill function on your browser is probably preventing you from realising quite how often you let a stranger know how to contact you directly, but, if you’re anything like us, it’s a lot.
Like, really a lot.
At best, filling in these fields will result in unwanted emails from the service you’ve signed up for, as they attempt to market themselves to you in perpetuity on the basis of one passing interaction.
At worst, your contact details will be sold off or uncovered through a breach, resulting in an avalanche of spam and phishing emails. You can even delete those created emails once they are no longer useful, cutting down on the spam.
This has definitely already happened to you multiple times.
Crime
We’ve all had a chuckle at the crudity of phishing attempts involving oddly hapless Nigerian royalty, but a significant number of people are caught out by online scams every year—at great expense to both their bank balances and their dignity.
Plus, there’s always a danger when you disclose your contact details that they’ll fall into the wrong hands. As harmless as that conference cohort or group of work collaborators might seem, giving away your email address could result in a stalking episode or worse.
The fact is, it’s impossible to be certain what use your contact details will be put to once they slip out of your hands.
Convenience
Avoiding spammers and cybercriminals are important reasons for using a service like Alternative ID, but the sheer convenience of having multiple online identities shouldn’t be discounted.
Alternative ID lets you easily and quickly switch between different email addresses, meaning you can separate the various aspects of your life admin into distinct, manageable streams.
You can achieve this by creating multiple accounts of your own, but this is a nuisance to manage. Fake name generators tend to be pretty questionable, privacy-wise, and creating your own fake name and address involves a ton of hurdles.
Included as standard in both Surfshark Starter (VPN and Alternative ID) and Surfshark One (VPN, Antivirus, Alternative ID, Search and Alert), Alternative ID helps you circumvent all of these problems by simply generating an online identity for you - complete with email address.
In essence, it gives you a whole new identity at the push of a button, hiding your real identity from prying eyes without making you jump through endless figurative hoops.
Best of all, you can pick up a Surfshark One subscription for as little as $2.19 a month (86% off + 3 months extra on the 24-month plan).
Head to the Surfshark website for more information.
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