You probably already know how a temporary email address works. There are plenty of services that offer such inboxes online. Most even do it completely for free. Frankly, it’s quite surprising that none of the major tech players have offered the service yet.
Well, that could change soon. The good folks at Android Authority have noticed some references to something called “Shield Email” in the latest Gmail Android app. The concept is simple: Google gives you a temporary email address that you can give to third parties in place of your actual email address. Then, when you receive an email at your temporary address, it will be forwarded to your regular email inbox. If at any time you decide that you no longer want to receive emails to your temporary email address, simply delete it instead of having to deal with spam filters and the like.
Protected email listed in a UI element
We assume that Google, like most existing temporary email services, will only allow incoming email in the temporary email and not outgoing email, as that would open the door for more nefarious and nasty use cases for the service.
According to a screenshot within Google AutoFill, also discovered by Android Authority, you may be able to have more than one “protected email” at a time. This would make things even more versatile. For now, the Protected Email feature is just a conceptual thing noted in a few text references and user interfaces and not something officially discussed in any capacity by Google. So it can happen, but it might as well be abolished. We will certainly keep an eye on any developments.