I need to send someone an anonymous email. There is information I want to share with them, but I don’t want them to know it was me. I have signed up for a proton mail account, not using my real name. If I send an email from this account while using a VPN, would this be an anonymous email that was virtually impossible to trace?
Sigh at these replies.
Okay, time for a real answer. I’m basing this off you need to whistleblow something important so it will be over kill if government agencies are not going to get deeply involved.
1: Install either Qubes OS or a new Linux distro.
2: Use solid password for hard drive encryption.
3: Use Proton or Mullvad for a VPN as both been to courts and their VPNs have no logs. All following steps should be using the VPN not located in your own country. Double hop (Secure Core for Proton) is a plus.
4: If not on Qubes use Veracrypt to put Whonix files in there to help keep contained.
5: If not using Qubes then download and use Whonix.
6: Update everything for main OS and for Whonix.
7: Extra points if you harden the VM by turning off settings like coping files to and from the VM and so on.
8: Login to the VPN. Saying this n case you forget before.
9: Use Whonix to create email account, this makes it so VPN-Tor is in effect. This is because previously Guard Nodes have been massively compromised. This protects against that.
10: Send email.
11: Change password on Veracrypt container to something random 20+ characters.
10: Secure erase entire hard drive.
11: Install new OS on that drive with new encryption.
OR
Install it all on a USB, it will be slow but perfectly possible. Then securely erase the USB drive and then destroy it with a hammer, toss it in a fire, whatever.
Unless the person you’re sending it to is the president of the United States your fine. If it’s your co worker you hate then they can’t do anything past knowing the email. If it’s anyone in a position of government I would suggest not doing that
You can theoretically use temporarily mail providers like secTor or mail2Tor. Use their onion websites
Impossible, no. Anonymous enough, yeah, pretty much. Unless you have the FBI investigating it, it’ll probably be fine.
There’s a lot of good advice here. The only thing I can add to this topic is that it is still possible to send actual physical mail anonymously through the post office. Not very technologically satisfying, but it could still work to maintain privacy under certain circumstances.
Ok. Leave your phone and other electronics at home. You need an older car, so it’s not tracking you. Drive to a store that sells computers in a different city , somewhere you’ve never been. Avoid places where there are cameras or license plate readers. Go there when it’s the busiest. Disguise yourself well. Buy a computer with cash. Go somewhere that has free wifi, watch out for cameras, and park elsewhere if necessary. Set up the computer with fake info. Download the tor browser. Get on tor, set up a free email with any service, use fake info, obviously. Send the email. Turn off the computer. Go back to your car. Wipe down the computer. Dispose of the computer.
You can either encrypt the text or use a email provider built to actually be private or you could even open a burner email.
You can use Virtru to create a self districting email. It’ll self delete after your set amount of time after opening
free account? If paid paid with crypto only from clean enough wallet? Are you careful to never ever use that email for any site that knows your real name? Is there anything in the email that might give you away? If all of these are satisfied it is not easily tied to you by anything along the email processing chain. But if it is totally anonymous why wouldn’t receiver just chuck it in the trash?
Isn’t there a way to make an email self destruct?
Use tor and not a vpn, then its fine.
You can’t actually do that. An ISP will provide you a connection to the internet that will route your message (in your case, an email) to the receiving ISP. In order for that to take place, information is encoded and exchanged. There is no anonymity or privacy.
Just don’t put anything in the “from” field
Why not simply go with Tor and/or something like Tails?
Wow. Thanks for all this information. You’re correct, that is overkill in this situation. However, the depth of your reply leaves me with a question: Is it possible to just use a computer in a disposable fashion? For example, can you buy a cheap laptop solely for the purpose of sending an email once? And then, destroy the laptop? Or at least never use it again?
Thats right, the VPN provider immediately shares their logs with the FBI or depending the message with other 3 leters agency haha
"jlz33d, have you been sending email again?! How many times have I told you… "
- Your wife, going through your household’s monthly expenses, probably
so would you aliases emails or a new unique mail each time for this matter, I want to know this
with email body completely? looking for someone to answer