Google is testing Shielded Email to protect you from scams

You undoubtedly understand how a temporary email address works. There are numerous services that provide such inboxes online. Most do it completely for free. Honestly, it's astonishing that none of the major tech companies have offered the service until now. That could change shortly. Android Authority discovered references to "Shield Email" in the latest Gmail Android app.

The principle is simple: Google provides you with a temporary email address to give to third parties instead of your actual email address. Then, when you receive an email at your temporary address, it is redirected to your normal inbox. If you decide you no longer want to receive emails from your temporary email, simply delete it rather than dealing with spam filters and the like.

We assume that, like most other temporary email services, Google will only allow incoming email into the temporary email and not outgoing mail, as this would open the door to more sinister and irritating use cases for the service.

Also, according to a snapshot from Autofill with Google discovered by Android Authority, you may be able to have more than one "Shielded Email" at once. This would make things even more adaptable. For the time being, the "Shielded Email" functionality is simply a concept, as evidenced by a few text references and UIs, and has not been officially explored by Google. So that may happen, but it's also possible that it won't. We will keep an eye on any developments.