Tired of signing up to services or websites only to be spammed? Gmail could get a ‘shielded email’ feature to save you from all that stress

• Code for a ‘Shielded Email’ feature is in the Google Play Services APK
• You’ll seemingly be able to use a temporary email address to avoid spam
• Doing so could also avoid your real email being leaked in a data breach

Gmail could offer the ability for users to create temporary email addresses, for signing up to online accounts or services they may be unsure about, allowing people to hide their real email address and avoid being spammed in the future (or perhaps worse dangers than that).

Android Authority got the scoop on this after digging around in the inner workings of the new 24.45.33 release of the Google Play Services APK, which contains references to ‘Shielded Email’ and a bunch of clues as to how this feature will work.

You’ll be able to create a shielded email – a temporary (Google-generated) email address different from your actual Gmail address, the mail to which gets forwarded to your Gmail inbox – when you’re forced to enter an email to sign up for an app, for example, or a website.

In these cases, with an unknown or less trustworthy firm, if you enter your real email address, you might then be spammed repeatedly by the company or website you’ve signed up with. When that inevitably happens, you can simply turn off that secondary email address – just bin it – and voila, no more spam emails.

As one of the strings of text in the hidden bits of code puts it: “To control spam, you can turn off forwarding at any time in your Google Account.”

Getting out of that bind is obviously not as simple as that if you’ve provided the company with your real email address.

Analysis: Security benefits

What’s also important to note is…