Email proxy server

Feature name

Dedicated email server for managing email proxies

Feature function

What will this feature do differently?

  • Bitwarden will provide a email server that works alongside its main app. This will be slightly similar to Apple’s iOS password manager’s email proxy service.
  • This can be either self-hosted or hosted by Bitwarden. In either case, the customer will provide (or at least have the option to provide) the domain name to be used by the proxy server.
  • When adding a new secure item (e.g. login) on one of the client, the user can generate a random email address at the domain name associated with their Bitwarden account.
  • Random email addresses should be customizable. You should be able to choose if they look like professional emails (e.g. [email protected], [email protected]), personal emails (e.g. [email protected], [email protected]), or random strings (e.g. [email protected], [email protected]).
  • Random emails should never repeat and there should be an option to reserve certain emails or email patterns (based on regex patterns).
  • The client app controls which email address the proxy email address forwards to. The user should be able to select default email(s) or custom email(s) to forward to.
  • If the user regenerates the proxy email, it will automatically stop forwarding emails from old proxy email address to the user’s preferred email account. And as long as email forwarding for that secure item is turned on, emails will automatically be forwarded from the new proxy email address to the user’s preferred email account.

What benefits will this feature bring?

  • Easier management of proxy/aliased emails.
  • Harder to bypass that traditional alias emails (e.g. [email protected]). Some authentication services used by various apps and services don’t let you use traditional email aliases.
  • Open source parity of Apple’s email proxy password manager feature.
  • Proxy email services and password managers are a logical business combination.

Related topics + references

Are there any related topics that may help explain the need and function of this feature?

  • email proxies (and counter measures)
  • email aliases (and counter measures)

Are there any references to this feature or function on other platforms that may be helpful?

  • Apple’s password manager (for iOS) has a built-in email proxy system (although it’s somewhat clunky)

As far as I understand this is a bit off current’s Bitwarden vision, as it’s focused on sensittive/secret information management solution, which is mentioned in their mission

There are other solutions such as Simple Login that provide that. Of course joining both functionalities in a single suite is nice, but their serve different goals and each has its niche; so from my point of view (that nobody asked for, I know) it’s difficult to get this as a built in feature, but maybe makes sense as an integration at some point.

I swear I was not aware, but I just came across this

So basically bitwarden supports integration with a few different email aliasing solutions :partying_face: