Mail, MailGap, and public aliasesCopy Anchor Link

Mail is the CAIRL capability for email through addresses that CAIRL issues and you control. This page explains how Mail is organized, what MailGap does today, what a public alias would be, and what is available now. For the details of reading, replying, alerts, and deletion in MailGap, read How MailGap keeps inboxes separate.

What Mail isCopy Anchor Link

Mail is the capability responsible for email communication through controlled addresses, with defined boundaries for the address lifecycle, message handling, disclosure, and sending. It belongs to the Relationship Domain, inside its Communication System.

Mail owns two feature offerings: MailGap containment, whose public name is MailGap, and public alias communication. MailGap is the public name of an offering within Mail, not the name of the capability. Creating and managing aliases, and alerting you to activity, are supporting Mail functions that MailGap uses.

What MailGap does todayCopy Anchor Link

MailGap containment gives you a CAIRL address, called an alias, that you can offer to a website, newsletter, or contact instead of your primary address. Messages sent to the alias are received inside CAIRL. You read them in MailGap; their content is not forwarded to your primary personal or business inbox.

Messages display as plain text, without remote images or tracking content. Attachments are held rather than offered for normal download or inline viewing.

When a reply is eligible, you can reply from the alias. The reply goes to the sender of the message you are answering, and sending controls apply. You can pause an alias, rotate it to a replacement address, or burn it.

Optional activity alerts can go to your CAIRL account email. An alert is a notification about activity, not a copy of the message.

What MailGap does not doCopy Anchor Link

MailGap does not forward message content to your primary inbox.

MailGap does not send new email to a recipient of your choice. A MailGap alias replies to messages that arrived at it, when the reply is eligible; it does not start a new conversation.

A MailGap alias is not a public alias, and MailGap's permissions do not extend to public alias communication.

MailGap is not a technical air gap. Email still passes through email infrastructure, and a reply can still identify you if it contains personal information.

What a public alias would beCopy Anchor Link

Public alias communication is a planned offering of Mail for protected outward communication through a public alias identity. It is a separate offering from MailGap, with its own sending authority. Nothing MailGap does today is public alias behavior.

The difference between MailGap and a public alias is direction and permission. MailGap keeps correspondence contained inside CAIRL and allows eligible replies only. A public alias would face outward, with its own sending authority and its own sending controls. Permission does not transfer between the two.

Public alias communication is not built and is not available. No public alias can be created today, and there is no compose feature. If you are asking whether there is a public alias you can use instead of MailGap, the answer is not today. Every alias CAIRL creates today is a MailGap alias, and a MailGap alias is not a public alias. No commercial terms are approved for public alias communication.

Current availabilityCopy Anchor Link

MailGap containment is the offering of Mail that exists today. It is used from a signed-in CAIRL account, in the Mail area of your account, where MailGap is enabled. This page does not say whether MailGap is enabled for your account.

Public alias communication is planned and not available.

Mail has no price of its own, and this page states none.

Related resourcesCopy Anchor Link

• How MailGap keeps inboxes separate: reading, replying, alerts, alias management, and deletion.
• MailGap product page
• What CAIRL is: the five Domains, including Relationship, where Mail lives.