In a world where organizations collect your private data (from Social and other available sites) to target ads or to spread fake news and even manipulate elections, privacy is a big concern and perhaps dying. Discarding social sites and going offline is not a choice in the ever-growing economy, however, everything done anonymously is.
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Now that we have made a prelude of the concern, here are 7 best free temporary email services that you must use to go nameless and unidentifiable on the internet. As they say, “with great power comes great responsibilities”, so make sure you use these services for good.
Mailinator
This is a free temporary email service with over great interface with a reliable service. Whenever you require a temporary mail address, all you need to do is, make up a name and prefix it with @mailinator.com, that’s it. Then, visit the Mailinator, enter the same name, and check the received mail. Although, you can sign in with Google account, but it is not mandatory.
If you haven’t suspected it already, there’s a drawback to this, if someone else comes up with the same name, then you both get access to the message received (as there’s no password involved). In addition to that, you cannot send emails from Mailinator. You can, of course, pay $29/month if you want to get a 10MB storage private inbox.
TrashMail
Unlike the Mailinator, TrashMail.com isn’t just a temporary email address creating a website, but also a browser extension (for Chrome and Firefox). So, all you need to do is create a new email from a number of domain options available and Trashmail will forward it to your regular address in a time-frame defined by you.
Of course, there is a limit of forwarding you can do. Well, to go unlimited along with a full address manager (which lets you create as many addresses you like) you need to pay $12.99/year.
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Hide-Your-Email
This service does exactly as its name goes. Not a good interface, but simple. No sign-up required, all you got to do is – select the name you want for an @pidmail.com. The message sent to it immediately show up with no lag.
Although it looks simple and can be used for receiving a message, however, this service can’t be used for sending messages. You can reserve the address of your choice with a password but no charge.
Hushmail
One of the simplest services but does the core part of the job of keeping your data and yourself safe from the internet. This service is recommended by the EFF and others and doesn’t include advertising and has built-in encryption between members. As you guessed it, it’s not a fully free service, but you have to pay.
The charges start at US$49.98/year for 10GB of online storage, while a free version offers 25MB of storage. Mind you, Hushmail has turned over the record to the feds before, as its terms of service state that you can’t use the service for “illegal activity”, basically, it’s not going to fight court orders for privacy.
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Email On Deck
Simplest and minimal, this service is one of the best services on the list. To start, there’s a two-step process to get a free email for receiving messages at Email On Deck. First thing first, enter the CAPTCHA correctly for the system to recognize you as a human and there’s no step two, the service randomly assigns you an obfuscated email address.
You can click a button to get assigned another, mind you all these email addresses are temporary. So, you can’t use the assigned email address beyond an hour or two, which is understandable and for the most part won’t bother you much.
Guerrilla Mail
This temporary mail service provides you a disposable temporary email. So, when you create an email address, the site will store the address forever, however, it cannot be used again. So, any mail received at the address can be accessed only for an hour. Not just that, there’s an option to use your own domain name as well, but you lose the purpose.
This service provides you more permanent but anonymous email address or in other words, a quick way to send email quickly and instantly with no signup. You can also attach a file if it’s less than 150MB in size, or use it to send someone your excess bitcoins. Well, coupled with the Tor browser, Guerilla Mail makes you practically invisible.
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ProtonMail Over Tor
The best is the last, ProtonMail is our personal favorite service that provides fully encrypted messages with servers in Switzerland, where privacy is appreciated. Anyone can get an account for free with 500MB of data and up to 150 messages per day, if you want to use advanced features, pay 4 Euros/month.
Encryption of the mail is one thing and being anonymous is another thing which comes with ProtonMail’s specific support for Tor via an onion site, to set up go to protonirockerxow.onion and follow the instructions. Having said that, ProtonMail doesn’t require any of your personal info for signup and also supports two-factor authentication.
