How to make your own anonymous email service
For those new to anonymous email services like Mailinator, they’re a handy way to sign up for a service or mailing list without divulging your personal information.
In a nutshell, they accept all email to their domain, like trump@mailinator.com, and make it available at a URL. Here’s the fake Trump inbox if you’re curious.
While this is handy, it has some clear drawbacks:
- 📬 This inbox is public. Not a dealbreaker, but it requires you to think up hard-to-guess names in case someone else accidentally stumbles on it.
- 🌬 The messages aren’t in your usual mail application and are deleted after a certain period of time. This means you have to trade convenience and permanence for privacy.
- 🙅♂️ It’s easy to block. Mailinator’s domain and many of their aliases are commonly blacklisted on signup forms, cornering you into using your real email (😱 oh no!). These same services often block Gmail and other freemail services as well.
Making your own
I recently discovered a neat little feature in Google Domains that lets you set up email forwarding with a wildcard. Here’s the exact text (emphasis added):
Email forwarding allows you to set up alias email addresses which are alternative addresses that are used as a substitute for an actual email address. Add up to 100 email addresses or a wild card (*) address that forwards to your existing email address. Google Domains will send a verification email to each unverified recipient address.
With a wildcard, we get the same functionality of Mailinator, but with our own domain. It can opaquely forward to your personal Gmail account or any other mail service you’re using, and you can get up and running in two simple steps.
1. Register a domain with Google
I recommend something short and memorable, even if you have to use a non-traditional domain ending. Remember that you may need to recite it over the phone. You can buy a domain from Google or transfer one you have with another registrar.
2. Set up email forwarding with the wildcard
From the Google Domains dashboard, click into the domain you just purchased, then navigate to the “Email” menu in the sidebar. From there, you’ll be able to fill out the “Email forwarding” section with the asterisk (aka wildcard) and your personal address. Official Google instructions.
Google even configures the necessary DNS records for you. Nice.
⚠️ These DNS changes can take a short while to process, so just give it a few hours before sending it an email.
3. (Optional) Set up the option to send mail with your new domain
Sometimes you need to also send email from your blackhole domain. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to generate ad hoc addresses for this, but if you have to send emails on occasion, this may be useful.
I won’t go into detail on this one since there are official Google instructions on how to do this, but remember to make your reply from name and handle to something ambiguous.
Tips on how to use it
This new address gives you an added layer of privacy between you and whomever you give it to, but it has its own drawbacks too. Here are my tips for using it effectively.
Decide on a naming pattern
My favorite is <service-name>@<my-domain>, e.g. allbirds.com@lol.ceo. By doing this, I can easily see to whom I gave this email and even trace it as it inevitably gets shared around the internet. This pattern encourages you to never use the same email twice, which is a good habit in my opinion.
Create an entire fake persona
Sites don’t often ask for only your email address, so come up with a fake name, address and even profile picture. I’m no security expert—and if you’ve followed my instructions to this point it’s unlikely you are either—so I make just one fake persona per domain.
For instance, when using lol.ceo, my stated identity will be Lolita O’Leary, a Chicago resident working at Loyola University. It’s memorable.
Leverage mail filters
Gmail’s mail filters can do more than just block stale addresses. You can also set up time-based filters so that certain mail doesn’t clutter your inbox for very long, like a filter that archives mail from oneday@lol.ceo that is older than one day (older_than:1d using Gmail search operators).
Don’t give away personal info
Though this may sound obvious, it actually requires deliberate action. Reused profile pictures or pseudonyms can be linked together back to your true self. Consider this email address generator just the start of conscious identity masking.
In my case, I didn’t actually buy lol.ceo. I hope one of you anonymous readers nab it because it’s really great.
Disclaimer — it’s not truly private
You may have noticed I used the words “Google” and “Gmail” quite a few times in this post. The instructions provided depend on multiple services provided by Google—the company whose original mission statement was, “organize the world’s information.”
The intended audience for this post are people who are already using Gmail and want to minimize how much more personal info they let out into the world. If that’s not sufficient for you, there are likely other ways you can achieve the same outcome in another way. If you find one, please write about it! I’d read it.
If you liked the article and followed the instructions, share your new email domain in the comments! …just kidding that was a test please don’t do that.
But if you did like the article, I’d love to hear it 😇.
