How to Send an Anonymous Email: A Quick Guide

Here’s How to Send an Anonymous Email to Maintain Your Privacy & Prevent Tracking

Email offers two-way communication by nature. However, it carries a lot of other information apart from the sender’s email address, by which it becomes easier to find out who has sent an email. For instance, if you look through the full email address, you will find information regarding routing, which is more than enough to know about you.

Though, if you want to send an anonymous email while keeping your identity hidden or else you’re questioning, is it possible to keep yourself hidden and send an email or how to send an anonymous email, then keep reading.

In this article, we’ll discuss whether it’s possible to send an anonymous email, the possible options if you can send an anonymous email without being caught and what are some of the important steps you’ll require to follow to send an anonymous email.

Let’s get into details.

What Is Anonymous Email?

Anonymous emails are sent to a recipient via third-party servers that don’t track or identify the message’s original sender. Anonymous messages are considered one of the safest ways to communicate with others without worrying about your privacy.

Likewise, the anonymous email also provides extra privacy and security compared to regular email accounts. And it also allows you to communicate with whoever you want without being risked getting tracked. In other words, anonymous email works as it’s named. It helps to keep the recipient of the message unaware of any identifiable information of the sender, such as location, name, and address.

On the other hand, many may think that sending an email is quite safe, and you don’t have to worry about it. But it’s not true. With numerous massive data breaches and data leaks happening regularly, and the password chosen by users, regular email accounts aren’t hard to crack down. Also, they are not safe means that the user isn’t anonymous.

Even if you create any special email account such as anonymoushiddenuser@gmail.com, you’ll also be required to provide certain details about you, like a backup account or phone number, for verification. And, if you provide fake information, your IP address can easily be tracked by your ISP (Internet Service Provider).  

Anonymous Email – Really Anonymous or a Hype

If you aren’t aware and questioning what is anonymous email is, then put simply, it has two main features:

• An anonymous email message is not traceable. So, no one can track you back.
• Anonymous email doesn’t consist of any personal information of the sender.

Though, when it comes to regular emails like Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook emails, you may think that if personal information like name or last name is only considered personal information and it doesn’t make much difference, you’re wrong.

For many people like whistleblowers, journalists writing regarding any sensitive topic can get them into danger if their emails get traced, and due to that reason, untraceable email proves helpful. Though many of us can create a certain level of anonymity, such as not including any real information about ourselves when creating regular email addresses, using a VPN for encrypting your internet traffic and mask your original IP address. But if you want an unbreakable maximum level of security, you should go with an untraceable anonymous email account.

Here’s How an Anonymous Email Works

You won’t notice much difference on the outer side, and it will come across like any other regular email. For many, using fake information when creating an account can be considered anonymous, like providing fake or disposable phone numbers instead of real phone numbers for a Gmail account.

However, anonymity is more than providing fake information. For example, your ISP and email provider can find your true IP address, and based on that, and you can be located. But, to have a higher level of anonymity, an untraceable email account proves more helpful as it encrypts your entire connection. It provides protection for email content as well as hides your IP address.

Likewise, you can also clear your activity by setting an auto-destruct feature for such an anonymous mailbox. For instance, your entire data will be completely deleted, which isn’t possible with other email services like Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook.

How Anonymous Email Differs From Regular Emails?

An obvious difference between the two – anonymous emails and regular email is regarding anonymity. As the name implies, an anonymous email will keep you anonymous, and other email services like Gmail or Yahoo won’t. In other words, in certain scenarios, your regular Gmail or Yahoo email service may not be able to provide anonymity as an anonymous email provider can.

However, it doesn’t mean that regular email addresses aren’t useful and should be deleted. Most of the time, regular emails are useful, like business communication. Likewise, any other similar setting won’t appreciate it if any information or CV is sent through an anonymous email address. Also, reaching out to a business partner through an anonymous email address doesn’t make sense, and instead, it looks quite similar to shooting yourself and then stepping on a snake.

Some other differences are, it’s not possible to use an anonymous email account for other login services as it’s possible with Gmail.

In contrast, anonymous emails are important, but not unless you’re sending any critical information where your life can be threatened or something else like losing your job if your identity is revealed.

In What Circumstances It’s Recommended to Send an Anonymous Email?

Anonymous emails are usually linked with malicious activities like phishing attacks. And it’s not new to say that cybercriminals send an anonymous email in mass quantity to succeed with their attacks. However, there are some other good reasons too where you can consider sending an anonymous email:

• You may organize a surprise birthday gift for your family member or friend. And to get their attention without revealing yourself and to be pretending someone else.
• In business, to protect your critical contacts and data, you may think about using anonymous email accounts that allow you to keep highly sensitive communications confidential while giving staff complete freedom to express themselves without fearing the consequences.
• Anonymous email can be extremely beneficial if any journalists think about providing a source that can threaten their lives if their identity gets revealed.
• Want to avoid the leak of any information in a social force or any political setting.

These are some of the reasons, and there can be others too. Likewise, let’s find out does it cost you anything if you decide to send an anonymous email.

How Much Does It Cost if You Want to Send an Anonymous Email?

The prices differ depending upon how much quality it provides in keeping your email anonymous. A free anonymous email account is available, but it’s not a good option if you’re looking to use an anonymous email service for the long term because of its storage size and the quality of keeping email anonymous. Likewise, free regular email service providers may show ads, whereas you won’t find ads if you use a paid anonymous email account. Therefore, it’s up to you what you want to consider or, what’s more important, your anonymity or subscription fee.

However, suppose you want to send an anonymous email to complain about something within an office on certain occasions. In that case, the free anonymous email account is preferable, as it has its drawback. You can send an anonymous email to a limited number of people and have limited storage capacity.

Further, free service of an anonymous email is provided as a trial version before you fully commit to paid versions. And the price range between $1 to $30, and an average monthly price goes anywhere between $4 to $5, based on the anonymous email service provider and plan you choose to go with.

Lastly, some of the benefits of choosing to go with a paid anonymous email service provider are:

• Premium anonymous email plan provides you extra storage capacity.
• Increased limit of sending an anonymous email.
• Good customer support.
• Improved and enhanced security for maintaining your anonymity.

Here’s What You Should Avoid When You Want to Anonymize Your Email Accounts

Before we discuss how to keep your anonymous email more anonymous at the time of sending an email, let’s find out some of the strategies that won’t work as expected, and instead, you should completely avoid it.

To hide identity sometimes people, create another fake email address and send an email through that, assuming their identity is hidden. Though at some level, it stays hidden, but it doesn’t offer accurate anonymity. For example, most regular email accounts need users to enter correct authentication information like a phone number.

And, once you get active with that account, these regular email services won’t use encryption. Therefore, it’s obvious that your IP address will stay exposed, and it’s possible to use very easily to detect your correct location and identity as well.

Here Are Some Effective Ways to an Untraceable Email Account

Below are some of the effective ways by which you can make your email account untraceable:

Use VPN Whenever You Use Fake Email Account

As it says, activate VPN provided by any globally known VPN provider before using your fake email account. It’ll help you by adding one extra layer of encryption. Likewise, your actual IP address will be scrambled by the VPN while making it tedious for snoopers to find out who you’re.  Furthermore, some of the popular VPN that we recommend using are:

1. NordVPN – One of the Best VPN to Keep You Anonymous

NordVPN is a Panama-based VPN provider that’s known for providing top-notch security along with anonymity. Consisting of 5200+ servers located in 62 countries, NordVPN is among the trusted security solutions recommended by some of the most well-known outlets such as Cosmopolitan, Forbes, and The New York Times.

Likewise, some of the security features that make NordVPN popular for providing optimal security as well as anonymity are military-grade encryption to protect your data, Double VPN to encrypt data twice that helps keep you anonymous twice from the anonymous email provider, strict no-log policy, DNS leak protection. Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox extensions to hide your actual location and IP address directly through the browser and much more.

However, if you aren’t sure and you still want to know about this VPN provider, then we recommend reading this detailed NordVPN review that has covered all the aspects that’ll help you decide whether you should purchase the subscription or not.

2. ExpressVPN – Secure & High-Speed VPN

Founded earlier in 2009, ExpressVPN is among the biggest and award-winning VPN providers globally popular for its best-in-class encryption leak-proof apps and the extension it offers.

Loaded with 3000 servers located in 94 countries, ExpressVPN is the trusted VPN equipped with industry favorite proprietary security protocols and IKEv2 and OpenVPN, which helps to keep you anonymous even in the most aggressive countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Likewise, it can prove extremely beneficial for news reporters to send anonymous emails while having extra anonymity of their locations.

Some features that make ExpressVPN special for anonymity are strong AES-256 encryption standard, split tunneling that excludes certain traffic from your VPN, masking of IP address, and OpenVPN with L2TP/IPsec PPTP and TCP/UDP protocol, and more.

However, if you still want to have details about it before making a final decision, we recommend reading the ExpressVPN review. It’ll help you find out all the important information you should know about before purchasing.

3. Surfshark VPN – Masks Your IP Address & Get Protection From Email Vulnerabilities

Newly established, developed, and managed by Surfshark Ltd., Surfshark VPN is the British Virgin Islands-based VPN provider known for offering impeccable protection and privacy to users.

Furthermore, Surfshark VPN comes with exclusive features like the camouflage mode that prevents your ISP from tracking your VPN connection, which can prove helpful when sending an anonymous email. MultiHop that connects you to multiple VPN servers concurrently that can provide double protection when sending anonymous emails. Split tunneling that excludes certain websites or apps from getting encrypted by VPN tunnel and more.

Likewise, suppose you haven’t decided yet or want to know more about Surfshark before purchasing. In that case, we suggest going through the Surfshark VPN review written over here. It’ll give you a clear idea of whether it’s safe and affordable or not.

Remailer Tool

Remailers are one type of special tool that takes email and redirects them to anonymous third-party IP addresses. Henceforth, the recipient has no idea who’s the original sender of the email message.

Some popular remailers are Rapid Remailer, Paranoia, and AnonEmail, which are quite popular for their reliability.

But there’s one drawback of using remailer because it knows the original email address that passes through their servers. So, users don’t have any choice and trust the remailer tool’s privacy policies and integrity.

However, you can maintain your anonymity with the Remailer tool by getting a VPN running. A VPN will mask your actual IP address, and the remailer tool will receive another IP address of the connected VPN server.

Anonymous Email Provider

The methods mentioned above are useful for sending your email without letting the recipient know about the sender. But, when you send an anonymous email, you also get the benefit from the security point of view, which isn’t as strong as you get from an anonymous email provider.

And, to make sure your email content remains completely anonymous and protected from cybercriminals or state surveillance is to send an email from an encrypted email account. Likewise, all email providers like Gmail don’t provide such a feature. Though few of them do offers encrypted email, and one such is ProtonMail provider, which encrypts email accounts free of cost and offers premium subscription plans starting from US$ 4.50.

So, once you send any message through ProtonMail servers, all your data will be encrypted from end to end while keeping you anonymous at every stage. Likewise, other anonymous email providers such as SecureEmail, Mailinator, and MailFence, are some options you can choose from.

Send an Anonymous Email With Attachments

If you’re looking to send an anonymous email with attachments instead of only texts, then it’s possible to do so. But you’ll need to look into certain things before jumping into it without any proper thought, such as space is quite limited for users.

Though, for sending anonymous emails with photos, Word documents, or excel spreadsheets, you’ll require to go with a certain anonymous email service provider like FastMail or Zoho Mail. It offers 100 GB plans or with Tutanota Mail that offers a maximum mailbox storage capacity of 10 GB.

Likewise, another important thing to take into consideration is the attachment size. For instance, Gmail provides attachment sizes for up to 25 MB. And, some untraceable email providers like Tutanota Mail or ProtonMail provides the same and some other like HushMail, or FastMail offers double of that size which is 50 MB.

Lastly, most of the time, an anonymous email with attachments ends up in a spam folder. Therefore, it’s recommended that you hide your identity but provide little genuine information about yourself, too, so the recipient trusts enough to open that email.

FAQ

Does Popular Email Service Like Gmail Reveal Your Actual IP Address?

Your hostname and external IP address will remain hidden if you’re using Gmail as a webmail service. Though, if you’re using Outlook or Thunderbird client for sending Gmail emails via SMTP, then your hostname and IP address are sent along with an email you sent.

How to Keep Your Email Address Hidden, While Sending an Email?

It’s not possible to keep your email addresses hidden from “From” when sending emails. But you can think about using the fake email address for tricking someone into believing that it’s not sent by you but someone else. However, you’ll still require using a real domain name, as non-existing domain names come across as spam emails by spam filters.

Is It Possible to Send an Anonymous Email Through Outlook?

Outlook always makes use of an email account that’s related to the sender. It means it’s impossible to mention other email addresses in the “From” field, other than the one your account is using. Likewise, failure to match, Outlook will display an error, and you won’t be able to send an email.

Is It Possible to Send an Anonymous Email Through Gmail?

No, you cannot send an anonymous email through your Gmail account. Google collects your data and, based on that, it serves Google ads to you. Though, there’s a possibility of maintaining privacy through the Gmail account at a certain level if you consider using a fake name, date of birth, and location when registering with the Gmail account using VPN.

How to Hide My IP Address While Sending an Email?

To hide your IP address while sending an email, you can use a TOR or VPN solution that’ll display the proxy server’s IP address instead of your actual IP address. Similarly, it’ll also avoid revealing your IP address to the public when you send any email.

Which Is More Secure Outlook or Gmail?

The security settings of Microsoft aren’t that easy to understand. On the other hand, Google’s privacy policy is quite transparent. Furthermore, Google allows you to log in using 2FA hardware, making it a more secure authentication method.

Also, some other extra features, such as keeping spam messages separately in the Junk folder instead of adding yellow or red icon at the top of suspicious email, Gmail becomes more secure and preferable than Outlook for security purposes.

What Does Burner Email Account Mean?

A burner email account is a spare email account that doesn’t have any important contacts, and usually, it’s disposed of after certain usage. Some benefits you get from using a burner email account are that your real user’s name won’t be connected to it or any other important account.

Which Anonymous Email Services to Go for?

Some of the popular anonymous email service providers you can choose to go with are:

• ProtonMail – Secure, anonymous emails with a no-log policy.
• Tutanota – The best anonymous email provider with security features like end-to-end encryption.
• StartMail – Privacy-focused and easy-to-use anonymous email provider.
• Guerilla Mail – It’s a popular anonymous email provider that offers features like a temporary email address to receive and send an anonymous email.
• FastMail – Privacy-friendly Gmail alternative to keep you anonymous while sending an email.
• Zoho Mail – An anonymous email service with a powerful control panel.
• HushMail – Send an encrypted email while keeping yourself anonymous.