This is our first look at Google’s upcoming spam-fighting Shielded Email feature

A couple of months ago, our Android Authority team discovered clues pointing to Google’s work on a new Shielded Email feature. The clues were hidden in a Google Play Services APK and hinted at a system where Google generates a new email alias for you so you don’t have to sign up for apps and services with your primary email address. Now, we have another hint at how this feature will work.

Shielded Emails, as we’d previously discovered, will be part of Google’s Autofill system. Just think of all the apps or screens where Google pops up with its suggested autofill details based on your saved passwords and usernames; all of these should be the new home for this new Shielded Email. And that’s what we’re now seeing after enabling the option.

In the two screenshots above, where we were trying to sign up for Amazon, Gboard’s smart autofill bar not only suggested the usual email address it knows we usually use but also a new Use Shielded Email option. Tapping that doesn’t work since the feature isn’t live yet — Google probably needs to enable the alias-creation system server-side.

But work is clearly coming along nicely on the new option. When it becomes functional, and based on the strings we’ve previously discovered, it should technically offer to generate a new single-use or limited-use email address for that app or website in an Apple Hide My Email-like fashion. Any email you receive at that new address will be auto-forwarded to your main address, which is kept private, and you can stop forwarding at any point to avoid any bad spam.

I’ve previously used a throwaway account or added “+whatever” to my main email address (if your email address is xyz@gmail.com, Google will recognize any email coming to xyz+[something]@gmail.com as yours and send it to you) when signing up for some questionable apps and services. But I’m not too disciplined about it and I end up with random spam or tons of logins for services that no longer exist but that still have my data and primary email address. I like Google’s approach here because it’ll literally be there on the keyboard, and it’ll save me from manually creating and maintaining multiple email accounts.

This should also stop apps from tracking you across services because you’ll leave breadcrumbs associated with different addresses on each of them — as if you were a different person. And it’ll have a bonus side effect of protecting you from some data breaches since you’re not giving away your primary email, and nefarious people can no longer consolidate your data across services. All in all, it’s a fantastic new feature, and I can’t wait for it to roll out. I can’t believe it took this long to implement, either.