This is the first part of a saga where we will analyze some of the alternatives that the Internet freely disposes to realize communications anonymously.
TL;DR
A list of free popular services to send and/or receive emails anonymously. Our favourites are Yopmail and GuerrillaMail.
Note 1: most of them only can send mail internally.
Note 2: most of them are insecure but SMTP-anonymous.
Note 3: most of them are persistent for some time only. The persistence of the inbox is never reliable.
Why and when could we use proxy mail?
The goal would be the reception/communication of emails without using a personal account, protecting our privacy.
This could be useful in some of these scenarios:
- Fulfilling a commercial form
- Avoiding SPAM
- Reporting a crime anonymously
- Receive and ignore newsletters
- Not wanting to receive emails to our personal inbox
- Create an account somewhere on the internet
- Minimize the probability of receiving phishing and fake emails
Thus, in some countries, email is considered personal data, and local law demands the agreement of terms that allow the platform to manage and share the data with others. While these terms are usually a condition to using some services, employing the following platforms will protect our privacy by hiding our real data.
SMTP-anonymous
On the internet, “anonymous” is not as easy as most people think. There are several ways to locate a user using any of these platforms. Your ISP knows it. The platform knows it. Your VPN and your browsers know it, and so does your computer.
In this post, we refer to “anonymous” as “SMPT-anonymous”. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is the protocol used to send emails over the internet.
This kind of anonymity prevents the sender to know our real account by using proxy mail.
Note: if the user replies to a message from his/her personal account, the receiver will know the original account of the sender.
ºThe information that an enemy could collect about someone just with the email will be explained in future posts.
Free Proxy mails available on the internet
The following list is not complete, nor exhaustive, but shows and compares some of the most popular temp/fake mails.
Temp-Mail
https://temp-mail[.]org/en/
This platform is useful to receive emails but it can’t send. The address is random and can’t be chosen, being (in theory) “destroyed” after our session is closed.
Useful for ephemeral transactions and punctual receptions.
TemPail
https://tempail[.]com/en/
This platform is like the last one: a random address that can receive but can’t send data. However, the account will be deleted after 1h (in theory).
Useful for ephemeral transactions and punctual receptions.
TempMaillo
https://tempmailo[.]com/
Another one that receives emails to a random address, but this one has a preview of the message. Just another platform.
Mail.TM
https://mail[.]tm/en/
Mail.TM is great. This platform gives you an account and a password, allowing access to the inbox once the browser is closed.
This platform doesn’t need to register, as the account is randomly created.
EmailOnDeck
https://www.emailondeck[.]com/
This platform is the first on the list that can receive and SEND emails to another inbox, BUT only internally.
With this platform, a user can receive a message, like in the previous cases, but also communicate with another user using the same platform.
Not very useful. However, when the address is assigned a token is created and can be used to recover the inbox after the end of the session.
This gives EmailOnDeck both persistent inbox (for two weeks)and “private” access, as no other user could access our inbox without the email_token.
The platform can receive internal mail from other EmailOnDeck users. This feature is not really useful.
Temp-Mail.io
https://temp-mail[.]io/es
Temp-Mail.io is good. Allows us to forward the messages received to this “private” inbox, selecting the address of the sender in the forwarding. This can be combined with a filter/rule in the personal mail to coordinate the spam.
The forwarding configuration is advanced for a public inbox. This option will make our real account receive all the mail but the sender will not know our personal account or our personal data associated.
GuerrillaMail
https://www.guerrillamail[.]com/
GuerrillaMail is one of the few services that, for free, allows us to send an email to anybody.
Nobody is perfect, and Gmail, Outlook and other commercial mail platforms will mark GuerrillaMail as SPAM.
However, we have tested the mail and it was received, so the mission was accomplished.
CryptoGmail
https://cryptogmail[.]com/
Another basic service to receiving mail. It can’ send anything.
TempMail.dev
https://tempmail[.]dev/
Basic service to receive email. Another one to the list.
FakeMail
https://www.fakemail[.]net/
Although this platform can’t send emails, allows us to customize the address (but not the domain). The default time to live is 1h, but it can be extended.
Yopmail
https://yopmail[.]com/
Yopmail is one of our favourites. This platform allows us to choose any “@yopmail.com” address and internally creates a redirection to some alias. This platform also filters SPAM, so garbage and services like GuerrillaMail will not be received.
It also has an RSS feed to receive notifications when a new email arrives in our inbox.
As far as we know, Yopmail is persistent enough, but the open nature of this inbox makes it unsafe.
Recommendations with yopmail:
- Use a unique address to minimize the possibility of being intercepted
- Know that anyone could read, delete and download the same emails as you have.
by @kosmokato
