How to send an anonymous email
Emails
provide identifiable
two-way communication by design. Aside from the sender
address, email has a lot more information that could be used to identify you.
If you look at the full email header, you could find routing information. This
might be enough to identify you, which might get you
in trouble if you’re sending sensitive information. The proper way to do it is
to send an anonymous email.
How to send an
anonymous email without being tracked?
Sending private email means hiding
your real IP address and using a secure email service provider.
Most popular email platforms like Google or Yahoo are excellent in their
simplicity and storage but are lacking in the privacy department.
- Pick a secure
email provider. ProtonMail is
one of the best options.
- Register
for the service to get your mailbox
- Enjoy
your new, safer email
communications
If you expect to initiate a private conversation
via email, there are quite a bit of things that you could do. Keep in mind,
that most times, there’s no one fix solution. You’ll get the best combination
of privacy and security if you try to combine several methods. Not
only this will help you to stay secure when writing private emails but when
you’re looking for weak points in your daily browsing.
1. Use an encrypted and
anonymous email service
Encrypted email will function just like a
regular service with the bonus that end-to-end encryption makes it much safer.
Such encryption covers your emails, inbox, and contact list.
No one spying on your traffic will be able to read your emails, including even
the service provider (in some cases). Different providers offer different
features, but ProtonMail, Tutanota, StartMail and Guerilla Mail are guaranteed to be more
private than Gmail or Yahoo.
The
most anonymous email accounts:
- ProtonMail – the best secure email
provider
- Tutanota – the most anonymous email
provider
- StartMail – the best easy-to-use
email provider
- Guerilla Mail – the best temporary
email against spam
2. Use a “burner”
email
Similarly to how cheap prepaid phones are
used in shows like The Wire and Breaking
Bad, burner emails are temporarily used and then disposed of. They
either expire after a fixed period or will enable
you to send a message without registering an account that
could be traced back to you. You can use their temporary “send only” account at AnonymouseMail.
Burner emails can help you to fight spam
when registering on shady websites. The only drawback is that it can be very
tricky to reset your account registered on a burner email in cases when you
forget your password. The best course of action would be to use burner emails
when you know that it’s little chance that you’ll need to use it in the future.
3. Hide your IP
Whichever method you choose to send an
anonymous email, your IP may still be a liability. To hide
your IP address, you should use a no-logs VPN or Tor
browser. A VPN will encrypt your connection and
route it through an intermediary server, hiding your actual IP address. Tor
will pass your connection through several network nodes, making you
untraceable. There are even some VPNs that use these technologies in
conjunction, like NordVPN’s Onion over VPN.
4.
Remove the metadata from the files
If you’re sending a Word document, the
metadata in the files could be your giveaway. It can contain your full name and
other personal information that you don’t want to share. If it’s just documents
that you want to send without being traced, you should take a screenshot and strip
any EXIF data from it.
On Windows, there’s also a built-in tool for metadata removal called Document Inspector. This will help you to analyze what you’re including, giving you the ability to strip all the information from a file that you don’t want to be shared.
5. Create a
new email account
They easiest way to send emails anonymously
is to create a new email account. If you must use services Gmail or Yahoo, you
could create an email using false information. Choose a
fake name, home address, date of birth, and don’t provide a phone number. Keep
in mind, however, that even with these precautions, these services will still
track your cyber movements. They are also required to provide this information
to law enforcement agencies.
The most
anonymous email providers
If you want to send email anonymously, it
always boils down to choosing a secure email
provider. They can still keep a log with your name, IP, or location,
so you need to pick one that will respect your anonymity and will not collect
your data.
1. ProtonMail - the best
secure email provider
ProtonMail uses PGP encryption for your
emails before they leave your device. It guarantees a no-logs policy, so even
if law enforcement came knocking on the provider’s door, they wouldn’t have
anything to show them.
Keep in mind that once the email is sent,
it won’t encrypt metadata, headers, or subject lines. There is a free and paid
plan (from 4.00$ a month) that increases the maximum amount of messages that
you can send per day. The only downside is that they will likely ask you to
provide a telephone number to confirm your account.
ProtonMail also offers the feature of
self-destructing messages. All you need to do is set your preferred expiration
time, and, when the time comes, ProtonMail will delete the messages from the
recipient’s inbox.
Aside from that, this email service gives
you a free VPN, applications for iOS and Android, and an encrypted calendar.
2. Tutanota - the most anonymous
email provider
Tutanota can provide you with end-to-end
encryption. If you need, you will be able to send encrypted messages even to
non-Tutanota users. The encryption includes not only the inbox, but your
contacts as well. You won’t need to provide any identifiable information when
registering an account. Plus, it will strip your IP address from your emails.
Their code is open source so everyone can examine it.
This secure email service is one of the
best options for those who don’t want to spend a fortune - or to spend money at
all. That’s because it offers a free version that includes 1 GB of storage.
However, this plan supports only one user and has other limits - for example,
it stores your emails only for four weeks. For additional features, like
setting up encrypted calendars and unlimited email history, you can pay as
little as 1.20 EUR a month.
3. StartMail - the best
easy-to-use email provider
StartMail is what Gmail could be if their
company focused more on privacy rather than how to place ads. Their parent
company even runs Startpage, which one of the few
privacy-friendly search engines.
Following this example, StartMail is one of
the most private email boxes that you could get. It supports
burner emails, so you can add barriers to your mailbox. Even if
such an email appears in a spam mailing list, you can quickly dispose of it and
create another.
Like most privacy-focused email services,
StartMail encrypts the messages locally and sends
them via HTTPS. There is also PGP support, but your contact will also have to
use a matching setup. Otherwise, it won't work.
4. Guerilla Mail - the best temporary email against spam
Guerilla Mail has been a popular anonymous email provider since 2006. It differs from the other secure email providers on this list, as it provides a temporal email address to send and receive email anonymously. You can either create the email address yourself or let Guerilla Mail do it for you if you’re in a hurry. You don’t even need to have an account to send messages, which makes things even more comfortable.
You can use Guerilla Mail when you want to
register to a site but are not comfortable with using your real email address.
In other words, you can use this email provider as a dumpster for unwanted spam
emails, or when you don’t trust the sender.
The best thing about Guerilla Mail is the
fact that it’s absolutely free - you just go to their site and use the service.
So far, Guerilla has processed more than 13 billion emails - and the number is
constantly growing.
Importance
of email security and anonymity
Using a standard email provider, in most cases you’ll get a decent service, but your privacy might be at risk. These services generate income from ads, and they need to know your browsing habits to tailor these ads for you. Plus, email metadata will expose your private IP address to anyone willing to look at the X-Originating-IP or Original-IP lines. This will enable hackers (or the receiver) to find your city, state, ZIP code, internet service provider, and more.
FAQ
Does Gmail reveal your IP address?
If you use Gmail as a
webmail service, your external IP address and hostname will not be leaked.
However, if you’ e using Thunderbird, or Outlook client to send Gmail emails
using SMTP, then your IP address and hostname will be sent through along with
your email. Keep in mind that during police investigation, Gmail would be
forced to reveal your IP address and location.
How do you hide your email address
when sending an email?
It’s impossible to hide “From” addresses when
sending emails. However, you can use
a fake address to trick someone into thinking that it was someone
else. You’ll still have to use a real domain name because non-existing domain
names will get caught up in spam filters.
Can you send an anonymous email in
Outlook?
By design, Outlook
always uses an email account associated with the sender. This means that it’s impossible to indicate other “From” that
your used email account. If they don’t match, Outlook will return an error, and
it will be impossible to send an email.
Is Gmail anonymous?
Gmail isn’t anonymous because Google
tends to collect your data and serve you ads. However, it’s possible to keep
some degree of privacy with the Gmail account by using a fake name, location,
birth date when registering, and always using a VPN with it.
Can I hide my IP address when sending
an email?
You can use a VPN or TOR to
hide your originating IP address when sending an email to have it display the proxy
server’s IP instead of your actual home IP address. This won’t reveal your
IP to the public when sending emails.
What is a burner email account?
A burner email account
is a separate email account without
important contacts that its user can quickly dispose of after
several uses. It has the benefit of not being tied to real user’s names or its
other accounts.
Is Outlook more secure than Gmail?
Microsoft’s security
settings are an enigma. Meanwhile, Google’s
privacy policy is much more transparent. Besides, Google offers login
through hardware 2FA, which is a very secure method of authentication. Plus,
there are excellent bonuses with Gmail, like placing spam in a separate Junk
folder rather than adding a red or yellow icon at the top of suspicious emails.
This means that Gmail is preferable to Outlook when it comes to security.
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