If you buy stuff online all of the time (or donate to causes, or register for services, or pretty much do anything that involves giving your email address out), you may see your fair share of spam. If your address is through Apple’s iCloud service, though, there’s a nifty way to control what you get using so-called email aliases. With these, you can essentially have a disposable address to hand out willy-nilly while concealing your actual address from those who might sell or abuse it.
To check this out, visit iCloud.com first and log in. Then choose the giant Mail icon.
Once the Mail service opens, click the gear icon in the lower-left corner…
…and then pick “Preferences” from the pop-up menu.
Under the “Accounts” tab, you’ll see any aliases you’ve already configured, and you can also add a new one if you haven’t used them all yet (you can have up to three).
So click on “Add an alias,” and fill in any info that you want to be associated with that new fake address.
Click “OK,” and it’s ready to go! From then on, any messages sent to that email will be delivered to your main address. Note, too, that you can either turn off or completely delete an alias at any time by going back to these same preferences, but when you do that, emails sent to that address will bounce. You can’t get a deleted alias back, either, so be careful if you go that route.
And if you need more info—such as how you can send messages using your brand-new alias, both from iCloud.com and from Mail on your devices—check out Apple’s support article on the subject.