You’ve got mail. Lots of it.
Sure, these days you rarely write emails. Sometimes an enquiry, sometimes an official message. At work, it may be more. In fact, you use your email address the least for your electronic correspondence. Most of all, you use it to create accounts. You need a valid email address to register for services, shops or events. This is to ensure that you are a real person. If you ever lose your access, you can restore it using your email address. Anyone who cannot legitimise themselves by accessing your email account should not have access to your accounts.
Thus, it is widely assumed that your email address(es) represent your personhood on the web. Conversely, your email address is the highest instance of your self-administration on the web. That is why your email address (more precisely: access to your email account) is also the most valuable asset on the web. That’s also the reason it is the target of most attacks and you should take its protection seriously.
It is still standard practice to enter your email address in countless places on the web — and thus to disclose it. Your digital identity becomes traceable and you never move anonymously on your way through the digital world. Perhaps you are among those who have created a “spam address”. Because you expect a whole lot of unnecessary e-mails on this address that you will never read anyway.
Why is this normal? In fact, it wasn’t always like that. Until a few years ago, it was common practice to use a username instead of the (real) email address to register on a website. The e-mail address would only be entered as a contact in the profile — optional and confidential. But, login technology, behaviour and preference all have evolved over the years and continue to do so.
Every time you enter your email address, you leave a clearly identifiable footprint. This footprint can only be yours, because it can only be left by you. Of course, this is not only true on the web. In the real world, too, you are often asked to reveal your real name and, in some places, a real e-mail address.
This can be used to create a profile of your activity. A trace of your person in the digital world and in the real world. Without your consent, without control by the state or even the terms of use of an individual provider. Anyone who wants to can follow your footprint without any effort. All you can do is trust that no one will abuse this opportunity.
