Receive Your E-mails Anonymously

A Simple Thing Made More Difficult by the Day.

Hello Avatar,

This will be a very short post about how to get set up an “anonymous” email address to receive emails. This is mainly useful for creating free or crypto-paid accounts.

You would think that this is a very basic internet skill and indeed, it used to be, but the war on privacy (and spammers) have caused most sites to invest in phone verifications for all users. This even applies to privacy oriented services like Protonmail and judging by the Jungle’s rating of Protonmail on Twitter, it behooves us to have an alternative.

What are throwaway e-mail addresses?

These also go by “10-minute mails”, “burner e-mails”, or “diposable e-mails” and normally give you a random email address that remains active for around 10-30 minutes.

Most domains that offer this are blocked by most large internet companies, but not all. You won’t be able to sign up for Facebook with one, but a CEX… maybe.

How do I use one?

1. Go to https://dropmail.me/

2. Copy the e-mail address displayed and use it to sign up for something online.

3. Did they accept it? Great, now go back to Dropmail and copy the e-mail confirmation code you got sent.

They didn’t accept it / I didn’t get a verificaton e-mail!

This happens a lot. Go back to Dropmail, click, on the arrow next to “Add additional addresses” and select one from another domain.

Repeat the above until you find one that works.

But I need my address to be permanent!

Fret not. Dropmail lets you save e-mail addresses and restore them with a randomly generated password.

1. Go back to your inbox in Dropmail and click on “Restore Access”

2. Click on the “Get Passwords” tab below it.

3. Copy your email address and password to your password manager.

The next time you go to Dropmail.me (you can close the session and log out).

1. Click on the "Restore Access" tab again.

2. Go to the "Restore with a password" tab

3. Enter the e-mail address(es) as:

email@domain:password

Congratulations, you now have a usable, anonymous e-mail address without any kind of verification.

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Bonus and Fine Print

Note: Dropmail.me has a lot of interesting functions, including one that lets you forward mails to another e-mail address, telegram bots, and an API that lets you use their services in scripts or from the command line. If there’s any interest, I can make a guide on that too.

Disclaimer: There’s obviously much more to anonymity online than using a disposable e-mail service. This is mainly useful to avoid spam or otherwise make you harder to trace for private people.

I’m not associated with Dropmail.me, I don’t know who runs it, and I have not read their privacy policy. Use at your own risk.