What Is An Anonymous Email – How to Get One

What exactly is an anonymous email? It’s the digital age and almost everything is out in the open. There is no iron curtain that hides your private information. The internet can be a dangerous place if you don’t know how to protect your identity. Even if you are just a regular user of the web, you must know that every click you make online gets tracked by websites. All major companies use cookies to keep a track of your data. Google has a number of services and it maps your activities across all those platforms to create a user persona for marketing purposes.

What Is An Anonymous Email – How to Get One

These companies say that online tracking allows them to create a more customized internet browsing experience. But the truth is that they do track you wherever you go. From your online searches to the videos you watch on YouTube and from your browsing habits on Chrome to what you send in Gmail, Google tracks every little detail of yours.

Internet Privacy and Security: Where to Start

If you’re a soldier or a journalist in a sensitive area, you would want your identity to be hidden. If you want to pass important information without revealing your identity, how will you manage that?

While internet privacy is important for everyone, it is especially important for people who have a hold over sensitive information. Or if you’re an individual who doesn’t want their identity to be revealed while messaging someone, you need to hide your tracks well.

For anonymous browsing, the best browser to use is Tor. This browser reroutes your online activity through multiple servers. Anyone trying to track your activities will have no idea where you are or what you are viewing. Tor is legal, free, and safe. It works for most normal internet users. You can even use Tor for Facebook. In fact, Facebook has a Tor-specific address for people who want that extra layer of security and privacy on social media.

If you want to add another layer of security to your web surfing, try a good VPN service provider. A VPN creates a virtual tunnel for your data so that it’s safe from prying eyes. There are several VPN services that offer 256-bit encryption that is practically impossible to hack. bNow, let’s move on to anonymous emails.

Emailing at Varying Degrees of Anonymity

The easiest way to get an anonymous email is to create a Google or MSN account and just enter a fake name and other details during the sign-up process. However, virtually all major email service providers ask for a backup email id or phone number. You can get around this as well by creating a temporary email id.

For phones, use an online service like Burner or Hushed or simply get a disposable pre-paid phone. This should create you a relatively anonymous mail id. Using this id in tandem with the anonymity tools mentioned in the previous segment will give you a decent amount of anonymity. However, it is not going to stop the cookie monster from finding out your actual IP address. If you are in an area where tracking your details could get dangerous for you, try some anonymous email offerings.

So here are a few of the most useful anonymous email service providers on the net:

5Y Mail

5Y Mail lets you send anonymous emails to any email address of your choice. You don’t have to create an account. Just visit the site and enter the recipient’s email address. Type the body of the mail and send it. If you want to get a reply, you can enter your real email. But the recipient will not get to know about your real inbox. Their mail will be directed to 5Y mail that will be redirected to your real inbox.

Mailinator

With Mailinator, you don’t need a sign-up. Just make up an id name and place @mailinator behind it. Then go to the site and check if you got any mail. The catch is that firstly, you cannot send emails. Secondly, anyone can check your inbox. There are no passwords. All you need to do is enter an email address and see what’s in the inbox. There’s a paid plan as well. If you pay $139 per month, you can have a team Mailinator for 5 team accounts.

Cyber Atlantis

Send an anonymous email in such a way that even your IP is untraceable. If you’re a journalist and want to pass super-secret information, this can be a good platform. Just enter the recipient’s email address, the body of the email, and Captcha. Hit send and your email will be sent. It’s that simple. However, you can’t get a reply because it’s a one-way system.

Guerrilla Mail

If you want a disposable temporary email address to register for a service, Guerilla Mail is the perfect option. Many services ask you for your email address and then start spamming you. If you don’t want to give your real email address, just generate a temporary address and verify it to access the given web service. The email address generated by Guerilla mail are really obscure and the emails are deleted after one hour – even if they are unread. This way your inbox stays clean forever.

What Is An Anonymous Email – Final Thoughts

You can use all these mailing services with Tor browser to add more security to your emails. And if you want to send secure messages, here is a list of the top encrypted messaging apps.