Email security tips for iPhone

If you’re looking to configure email on your iPhone with privacy and security in mind, check out our tips on using Apple services and Skiff Mail for a secure experience.

Mobile inbox, including unread messages, subject, and email threads.

What is private email?

Most email apps are built for convenience - sending, receiving, and displaying emails. However, emails have become unusable, overwhelmed with spam, tracking information, and marketing data. Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, Microsoft Outlook and other traditional email providers have slowed down innovation on privacy and security. As a result, iPhone users deserve better options and new features that focus on email security.In this article, we’ll cover the best security practices for using email on iOS and iPhones. This includes new privacy features and security features that are offered by Apple, iCloud, and iOS, as well as how Skiff Mail - private, end-to-end encrypted email - can be properly set up and used on Apple devices.To start, we’ll cover email aliasing features, then we’ll cover tracking protection, blocking remote content, setting up two-factor authentication or passcodes, and additional features, such as using a VPN, that protect your email usage and inbox.Email has become a main form of identity on the internet for all professional, family, and personal communications - so we highly recommend following the tips in this guide to set up an email account with privacy and security in mind.

How to use email aliases

An email alias is an additional email address that can be used to receive and/or send from a primary email address. Aliases are helpful because they enable a user to receive email at a different address while still being able to access the email from the primary address, or to send and receive from multiple addresses. Aliases can be useful for a variety of reasons, such as:

Creating a more professional email address for business or professional communication - for example, [email protected] may be an alias to an individual user’s email.
Creating a separate email address for certain types of communication, such as signing up for newsletters or online accounts. Then, these aliases can be removed or deleted to keep your main inbox clean.
Creating a unique email address for different groups of people, such as friends, family, and colleagues.

Email aliases allow you to use one email account, but have multiple email addresses. This is useful to keep personal, business, and marketing emails separate, to have a custom email address for a specific group of people, or to have a temporary email address.In a professional context, many organizations also use email aliases to manage forwarding, multiple departments, or even email lists that serve multiple individuals.Apple’s Hide My Email feature on iOS and iCloud is an example of an aliasing service that will generate random email identifiers on signup. These identifiers can be used with total anonymity to authenticate into a new service. To configure a new Hide My Email address, simply start to sign up for a new service in Safari on iOS, macOS, or iPadOS.Apple will automatically suggest using an anonymized email address, which will obscure your true email address and possibly your personal identity. Hide My Email was introduced in iOS 15 and macOS Monterey for all users.

Secure email on Skiff

In this section, we’ll walk through how Skiff Mail works to bring full secure email to your iPhone and iOS devices. Skiff offers deep mail privacy protection features, including unlimited aliases, custom domains, domain purchasing, and end-to-end encryption - the absolute top standard in email security.Skiff also offers email clients and applications for iPhones, Mac, iPad, and other platforms (including Android and web browsers). To download Skiff apps, visit this link.

Block trackers in Skiff Mail

Blocking remote content inside emails yields a number of critical privacy benefits and has become standard practice in privacy-focused email software, such as Skiff Mail for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the web. These benefits include:

Privacy protection: By not loading remote fonts, images, or style information, your mail client will not make any requests to external servers. This ensures you protect mail activity, such as when you use or load emails. It also uses a proxy to hide ip addresses and device information, such as your operating system and browser (ex. Mac/Safari or Windows/Chrome). A proxy is similar to a VPN, where traffic is redirected through another server to hide the original source and device.
Phishing prevention: Frequently, phishing or malware emails may contain images that spoof or impersonate other sites or services. This can create significant risks to try and trick users into providing credentials.
Tracking prevention: Remote content frequently includes images or content that is used to track users, such as tracking pixels. There are relatively few other ways to block tracking pixels, as they can be disguised as different content types or resources.

Blocking remote content is available on Skiff Mail web apps inside security settings as well as the iOS and Android Skiff Mail apps.

Privacy, IP address, and security protections on Skiff

Skiff offers significant data protection features for your device and identity that go beyond Apple’s mail privacy protection features. This includes:

Blocking and proxying remote content functionality is included on all Skiff accounts, as described above. This prevents tracking pixels from ascertaining device, location, or open info.
Aliasing features, such as the ability to add multiple @skiff.com emails in one account, or to use custom domains and add unlimited senders ([email protected], [email protected], etc.).
Two-factor authentication is also available on Skiff to provide even better cybersecurity practices for your email. From the first time you set up your new email account, we highly recommend adding two-factor authentication.

End-to-end encryption for email

End-to-end encryption is the highest form of security and privacy in email and communications, as only you have access to your message content. With E2EE, the communications provider (here, Skiff) has no access to message content or subjects. Messages, subjects, attachments, documents, and calendar events are end-to-end encrypted on Skiff, ensuring that no one else has access to your data.Unfortunately, Gmail, iCloud mail, Outlook, and other providers do not provide end-to-end encryption and lack many of the security features or options described above as well. As a result, we recommend using Skiff Mail for secure and private email.Instead, most providers only offer encryption at rest, or encryption in transit, which periodically offer protection against database compromise or snooping a network connection. Today, both fall short of privacy protections needed as threats become far more complex and sophisticated.

Privacy for Skiff Pro and Business users

All Skiff users have access to Skiff Mail, Calendar, Pages, and Drive for end-to-end encrypted communication and collaboration. Below, we include a table on additional features that are included in all paid subscriptions across all products.

Features	Free	Pro	Business
Drive storage	10 GB	100 GB	1 TB
Sending messages (limit)	200/day	Unlimited	Unlimited
Folders and labels	5	Unlimited	Unlimited
Custom signatures
Auto reply
Schedule or undo send
Email + doc text search
E2EE link sharing
Document limit	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Skiff.com aliases	4	10	15
Custom domains	0	2	15
Workspace collaborators	6	6	Unlimited
Doc version history	24 hours	Unlimited	Unlimited

Skiff can also be used for teams and organizations looking to share email domains and workspaces across their company. From multiple users and aliases to shared teams and folders, Skiff provides a convenient and secure replacement for existing solutions. To learn how to set up a custom domain, check out our guide. You can also buy a domain name on Skiff to automatically integrate private email on Skiff Mail.

Questions?

If you have questions, feel free to write to us at [email protected], DM us on Twitter, post on our Reddit community, or start a conversation in our Discord.If you’re interested in using Skiff for your startup, family, or organization, write to us at [email protected] or check out our startups and nonprofits pages.