The Best 7 Free Email Security Tips for Keeping Your Account Anonymous

Besides being responsible for 397 thousand deaths (and still counting) and grinding the world economy to a near halt, the Covid-19 is responsible for another, more subverted danger.

It’s yet another excuse for governments to take away our online privacy by having us download coronavirus tracking apps that then have access to our location, photos, contacts and other data.

In many countries, these tracking apps are even mandatory. For instance, in Poland, a member of the EU by the way, ProteGo is mandatory for all citizens and has access to photos on your device.

There are many other cases like this, or even of apps for which there is little to no public information (that’s scary), so if you want to learn more, I suggest reading this MIT Technology Review article about it.

Now, you might say, “well, it’s necessary to track Covid-19 cases and prevent it from spreading further”, although I have yet to hear an expert explain how tracking your own citizens helps stop the virus from spreading.

However, that is not even the biggest issue here. The biggest issue is that those apps are just another way of tracking your whereabouts and online activities.

So why getting concerned about it?

Well, maybe you don’t want to be tracked all the time and having your online activities scrutinized by the government, or some big corporation collecting your data? 

Call me an idealist, but I’d like to live in a world free of that.

But what can you do about it?

Small steps and it starts with anonymous email accounts.

7 Free Secure Email Tips

Email is the standard for online communication, especially for businesses, but it’s also less and less private. These days you can never be entirely sure that someone hasn’t spied and intercepted a classified communication that you had with someone and tampered with it or stolen some of your data. 

In fact, that’s being done regularly if you’re using Gmail and other popular email providers. 

“Well”, you might say, “it’s a gazillion dollar company, there’s nothing I can do to prevent them from taking my data if they want”. 

You’re wrong on that account. It’s time to learn some free anonymous email account tips that will let you take control of your email account privacy back.

Use an Encrypted Email Service

End-to-end encryption email is the best way to keep your email safe from hackers and prying eyes. Encryption keeps your email private by mixing up your messages and making them impossible to read without the right decryption key.

You won’t need to encrypt every single email you send out there. However, anything with sensitive or private information, like your bank account or credit card number, definitely needs to be encrypted.

Use 2FA

Very often, you’ll hear that a strong password is essential for keeping your online accounts secure. But it’s not enough. These days, not even the strongest password you can think of is not enough to prevent a determined hacker from breaking into your account. 

That’s why you need to put another obstacle in front of them with 2FA or two-factor authentication. 

With 2FA enabled, it won’t be enough for a hacker to have your password to steal your email account. Instead, he’ll need another piece of information, like a one-time code or a verification on another device when they try to log in. And, since they don’t have that, access to your account will be locked to them.

Secure Your Attachments

There are times when you’ll have to send documents over email. That’s easy enough to do by clicking the attachment button in your email. But if that attachment contains confidential data, there’s a risk that it might get into the wrong hands. To prevent that, you need to secure your attachments by encrypting them.

Keep Your Private and Business Email Separate

According to a Radicati Email Statistics Report, an average user had 1.8 email accounts in 2018. Today, that number is probably 2 or higher.

Now, you might be thinking, “why would I need two accounts when one is enough?”.

Well, because it’s a good idea to separate your private account from your business account. Both will contain sensitive, confidential and privately identifying information on you, your family, company and plenty of other things. So why having all that information in one place, conveniently for the cyber-attacker to steal it?

Make Your IP address Untraceable Using Anonymous Email Accounts

These days, there is a kind of a backlash against social media networks like Facebook and a lot of people are turning to alternatives like Reddit, that give them more anonymity and greater freedom to express their opinion.

Even when it comes to email, you don’t have to use your own name to open up a Gmail account. You can do that under a fake name. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be tracked. Every email you send contains your IP address, by which you can be found.

However, some Free anonymous email account providers, CTemplar included, will hide your real IP and instead replace it with their own. So, even if someone looks, they will see the provider’s IP instead.

Instantly Delete Emails

Let’s say you sent a sensitive email, but now you need to delete it. So what do you do? 

Simple, you just click on the checkbox next to the email, look at the row of icons that just appeared up top and click on the bin. 

Problem solved.

Except it isn’t. You see that email might be gone from your inbox, but it’s still stored on the server somewhere. Very often email providers are obligated to keep these records for months before they can permanently delete your data. 

That’s not the case with every provider, however. You just need to find one that allows you to instantly delete your emails. CTemplar is that kind of email service.

Anonymous Payment Options

Having a free anonymous email account is a big step toward regaining your online privacy, but after using it for a while, you might consider an upgrade.

Perhaps you need more storage space or a feature like a Dead Man Timer or multi-user support. Whatever the case, that free account is no longer enough so you want an upgrade.

Great, that means better security, right? 

On most days, yes, but you also have to think about the payment system you are using. If that is not anonymous, your payment can be traced back to you very easily. UNfortunately, many “anonymous” email providers don’t have truly anonymous payment options, like Bitcoin at a minimum, or better yet Monero.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there is a lot to consider if you want to have a secure and anonymous email account. One might even think that’s overdoing it or that you need to be an IT security expert. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. You can sign up for a CTemplar free anonymous email account in just a few clicks, without using your name or verifying your phone number and take back your privacy.

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