104 PCWorld APRIL 2019HERE’S HOW SEND ANONYMOUS EMAILS
anywhere else, ever.
If you need a lesson in why this is
important read about how law
enforcement caught up with Silk Road
founder Ross Ulbricht (go.pcworld.com/
rsul). It all started with an obscure
username that Ulbricht had used years ago
and that he’d connected to his actual
identity. Remember, all it takes is one
slip-up to undo all your privacy-protecting
steps. Also, don’t start a digital black
market dedicated to selling drugs and
weapons—that’s just asking for trouble.BONUS SECTION:
ANONYMOUS EMAIL
SERVICES
When all you need to do is send a single
anonymous email, then conditions are
different. First, you don’t necessarily want to
bother with a secondary laptop. So let’s
assume you’re using the TOR browser on a
USB stick, but you’re still not connecting
from home or the office.
So what then? Visit GuerillaMail.com
(go.pcworld.com/grml). You’ll get adisposable temporary email address that
will last forever. Anyone can send an email
message to this address, but the messages
last in the inbox for only one hour. This is a
handy service if all you’re going to do is
send a single email with no response or
maybe a single response required, but it’s
not the greatest option for trading multiple
responses.
The thing is anyone who has the
GuerillaMail address you’re using will be
able to monitor the inbox since there’s no
username or password required.
GuerillaMail gets around this by supplying
two email addresses: the actual email
address that gets you to the inbox, and a
“scrambled” address that you give out to
others. It’s a neat trick, but it’s already
adding complexity to something that
doesn’t need to be this hard. We’d
recommend just keeping a secret identity
on a standard email service. Besides,
Guerrilla Mail is really about reducing
spam in your already overflowing inbox,
not necessarily maintaining a secret
email account.