Surfshark, a Dutch company specializing in the design of VPNs, is launching an innovative tool: AlternativeID. It offers its users the possibility of creating email address aliases to preserve their anonymity on the web a little more.
Anonymity is a difficult pipe dream to pursue when it comes to browsing the Internet. Even if many tools already exist to protect browsing or personal data, keeping your identity fully hidden is still very complex. Even though Surfshark doesn’t make that promise, their new service, AlternativeID, is quite interesting.
AlternativeID: a fictitious digital double
AlternativeID’s project is to offer its users the possibility of creating an alternative digital identity, with a country, a date of birth and a gender. This identity also requires the creation of a fictitious email address. Surfshark’s idea is that Internet users can interact with websites, buy on e-commerce platforms or subscribe to newsletters using this “fake” email address. This without the need to reveal their personal information. The alternate email address can be securely linked to the users real email address so that emails can be redirected if needed.
Use designed for flexibility
Sarunas Sereika, product manager at Surfshark, however, specifies that AlternativeID is a solution intended for the general public. It is not intended to be used in organizations requiring higher security measures such as official institutions or banks.
AlternativeID was developed with the idea of real flexibility in use. The aliases of an email address are therefore in a way disposable. Thus, it is possible to delete them at will and to recreate them as many times as desired. Surfshark is not the only company to offer this type of service, but Sarunas Sereika says the company stands out from the competition in three ways: the transparency of their privacy policies, their priority given to their credibility and the guarantee of safe experience to its users.
The tool is interesting, and the commercial discourse that boasts it is nicely shot. Even though Surfshark received a blessing from German audit firm Cure53 for its VPN in 2018, that doesn’t mean that all of its services should be considered 100% reliable. No risk does not exist ! What is rather reassuring, however, is that the VPN offered by Surfshark is not a free VPN. The company should logically not generate revenue by reselling user data recovered through a service such as AlternativeID for example.
Source : Google Docs
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