Cleaning up your online breadcrumb trail with Ghostery and Privacy Badger can only go so far if nearly every online service requires you to sign up using an existing Google, Facebook, or Twitter account. These services act as a soft form of background, inevitably tracking everything you do online. Data is the new gold standard and you are the product, but with a little bit of effort, an informed user can set up an anonymous email address and sever the root that feeds this increasingly Orwellian nightmare.
Disclaimer: Requires Tor
First and foremost, cookies and ISP-enabled “super cookies” create a link between your IP and all the content you consume, including the anonymous emails you register for. The only way to properly establish an anonymous email is to perform every related function through Tor Browser, not FireFox, Chrome, or IE. Tor, as you probably know, is an “onion router” that acts as a kind of super-VPN, obfuscating Internet traffic.
Avoid Gmail
You can set up a relatively anonymous Gmail account by lying about personal details and providing a phone number attached to a pre-paid phone. However, this route is risky as a single log-in without TOR is enough to reveal your real IP address and draw a correlation between the “anonymous email” and your personal one. The Electronic Frontier Foundation recommends using a different email provider for anonymous email than your personal. Considering there are stand-alone anonymous email clients, you may as well shy away from Gmail altogether.
Hushmail
Officially recognized by the EFF, Hushmail is web-based, free of advertising, and includes built-in encryption between members. Registration costs $34.99 per year and offers 1 GB of online storage, whereas trial accounts permit up to 25 MB of free storage and must be reactivated every three weeks. Keep in mind that Hushmail states in its EULA that it does not support “illegal activity,” and it did previously turn over its records to the FBI who pressed with a subpoena. Register for Hushmail here .
Hide My Ass! Anonymous Email
Many of you may already be acquainted with the highly reputable Hide My Ass VPN, which offers an unordinary level of privacy compared to other VPNS. But, did you know that a HMA also provides an anonymous email service whose subscription is independent from the VPN? Once signed up, you’ll be given an address with the suffix @hmamail.com that can be set to last 24 hours, one week, one months, six months, or even 12. The email service is also available via mobile app for Android and iOS, in addition to a privatized SMS text and chat service. Check it out here .
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Guerilla Mail
Guerilla Mail takes the anonymous email to the extreme, offering a disposable address that may send and receive email for an hour before becoming inaccessible. The service is primarily used as a precursor to register for a longer term anonymous email, like HMA, which requires an existing email upon sign up. Guerilla Mail may also be used to send a quick anonymous email, as there’s no signup necessary. Better yet, files as up to 150MB may be attached.
Mailinator
Consider Mailinator for all your ultra-quick service signups. Mailinator is a disposable browser-based inbox that generates addresses on the fly by typing a string of character and tacking @mailinator.com at the end of it.
That’s it—simply type the address name into the search bar and you’ll automatically access the account. The catch is that so can everyone else, which is why Mailinator is strictly meant to help you register for unimportant things. Bear in mind—the more complex the string of characters, the less likely someone else will access it. But who cares if they do? That’s point.
Source: PCmag
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