Alias – what is it?
While surfing the Internet, we often encounter terms we do not even know, although we have contact with them every day. One of them is alias, Alternative name for identifying objects. Although in the Internet it is usually mentioned in the context of e-mail, but it is used not only there. It is most often used to shorten and simplify the naming, but in fact it also has a number of other functions. What you should know about aliases and what they are actually useful for?
E-mail (postal) alias
E-mail alias simply speaking, it is an additional e-mail address which is connected to our main e-mail account. Thanks to this, having one e-mail account we can have many different e-mail addresses, but unfortunately only within one Internet domain. How it looks in practice? Assuming that our main mail account has the form [email protected], then we can connect to it also other addresses e.g. [email protected], [email protected] etc. In this way, messages sent to any of these additional addresses will still end up in our main mailbox. In this case, these additional addresses (contact and recruitment), are just e-mail aliases.
What are they for?
A postal alias performs various functions, but we must remember that it is not an additional e-mail account. Therefore, in no way increase the space allocated to us on the server. The only thing it allows us to do is to add more addresses to the main account to facilitate efficient mail management. What exactly is alias used for?
- dividing messages according to specific criteria – properly set rule can direct all messages sent to a particular address to a separate folder. Thanks to this it will be easier to browse and filter in the situation, when to one address there are different types of messages e.g. recruitment inquiries, competition entries, etc.,
- mail forwarding – It can be useful when one person usually takes care of receiving messages and e.g. goes on vacation. Then we can easily redirect emails directed to the main address to the mailbox of someone else,
- interception of lost correspondence – in the case of more difficult addresses such as. If you have a message that contains a name, it may happen that the user misspells it, and then such a message will not reach us. Such situations are not rare, if we give an e-mail e.g. over the phone, so it is worth taking possible incorrect addresses into account when creating aliases. However, we can also solve this problem in another way, in fact even more interesting. Just turn on the function Catch-all, which redirects all correspondence from all non-existent addresses.
Of course, these are only examples of uses for aliases, although there are certainly many more.
How to set up a mail alias
Setting up a mail alias is not particularly complicated, although with each provider it looks a bit different. Therefore, depending on which company supports our mail – it is best to check how to do it in the tutorials available on the official website. Alternatively, in case of problems, contact the support, which will certainly provide relevant information or even add such aliases.
Domain alias
Similarly as in the case of mail, having several domains we can also redirect them all to one website. This is especially useful in case of sites with international reach, if you want to e.g. redirect all national extensions to the global domain. An example of such application can be for example the popular Facebook, where all addresses of this type e.g. facebook.pl, facebook.de etc. aliases on facebook.com.
Similarly as in the case of mail aliases, in order to set up a domain alias it is best to look for proper instructions on the website of the company servicing our Internet domains.
Banking alias
The term „alias” can also apply to online banking, in which case it is our own identifier for logging into the service. Deciding to use it we don’t have to remember a difficult sequence of digits that we get at the beginning. You just have to think of your own „nickname” instead and start using it to log in. This one, however, can not be „just any”, because banks generally have their own requirements in this regard. Most often they refer to a certain number of characters, a minimum number of numbers, etc. It is also worth remembering that the created login should not be the same as in other services.
Summary
Although the average user will not find many uses for aliases, because they are simply unnecessary. However, having a company or receiving a lot of correspondence, the matter looks a little different. Then you should be tempted and try to use them to streamline your work and keep your messages more organized.
