Vox: “…While it’s creepy to think of your email reading habits being tracked, that’s not the only reason why you should consider taking a few extra steps to protect your email. Your email address has become one of your best and most persistent identifiers, and data brokers and marketers will match what you do with it in one place with what you’ve used it for in others. That helps them build an ever-more-comprehensive profile of your online (and offline) life. You might be fine with getting emails from the store you gave your address to, or even that store knowing whether you opened their emails. You might not be so fine with a bunch of other companies you have no relationship with knowing it, too. But that’s exactly what happens. There’s also the security factor. Emails get leaked in data breaches all the time, and there’s a lot a determined hacker can do with your email address, especially since email addresses often double as logins. If a company doesn’t have your real email address, that’s one less thing you have to worry about getting out there if (or, really, when) that company gets hacked.”