While the problem of spam messages and emails is ever-growing, Google often tries its hardest to fight back. Recently, the company was spotted working on a new feature called "Shielded Email" that lets you mask your real email address using temporary email aliases. According to a recent report by Android Authority, Shielded Email first made its appearance during an APK teardown of Google Play Services 24.45.33. From the strings of code, the publication inferred that the functionality offers a limited-time or single-use email alias that will automatically forward messages to your primary account. The publication also said that the new Shielded Email option appeared for them in the 'Autofill with Google' menu under Google in Android's Settings app, tapping on it took them to an empty page, indicating that the functionality is still a work in progress. The idea of using a temporary email to prevent your personal information from leaking on the internet sounds good, but it is still not known how Google plans to implement the functionality. While there are several third-party services like TempMail that allow users to use a newly generated email address to sign up for a website you are unsure of, Google's Shielded Email feature can be really handy since the company's autofill service works across almost all Android devices in almost every app you can think of. Another interesting to see is if these temporary email aliases will end with @gmail.com or if Google goes with randomly generated email addresses, something most current services offering temporary emails do. If Google's new Shielded Email feature uses an email ending with @gmail.com, it will be very hard for companies to track your data since it won't be easy to distinguish if an email address is real or a temporary one.
