A Low Key Mail Service
There are so many competing free email service providers today that it can be hard finding a service that fits your needs. But there are two giant problems with the majority of free email service providers that can ruin your personal security.
The first is that they can easily become inundated with spam email. Even with a spam folder, some spam is too cunning and finds a way to slip through the cracks. Secondly, the government has been caught red-handed wiretapping domestic communications and storing bulk Internet communications data (such as emails) on massive government-controlled databases and storage networks. Then, they have software that will allow them to sift through the masses of data they have collected to read the messages that American citizens have been sending each other. In fact, they were caught collecting data from giant corporations such as Google by forcing them to forfeit information or by installing backdoor software into many of the digital services that we use today. This inhibits users’ privacy because their email account is ultimately linked back to them.
With so much fear and distrust about the privacy of messages we send via email and more spam than you can manage, new services have arisen that aim to make sure you can send data anonymously. Even if someone does successfully capture your email as it is in transit through the Internet, there won’t be a way to trace the email back to you if you use a service that provides anonymity.
Features:
One such service is Guerrilla Mail, which provides access to temporary email addresses that expire within a very short time period. A lot of people like using this service if they need to register for access to a site in order to gain access to content but they don’t want to give out their real email address. This will save you the time it would take to create a new email account solely for the use of spam sites. All you have to do is visit their website and you will find that you are presented with an inbox for an automatically generated email address. Make sure that you don’t leave this page until you are done using your temporary email address, though. If you want to, you can extend the duration of time that your email address is valid for by clicking a button and there is even a button to copy your temporary email address to the clipboard since you likely don’t want to type it out.
Security:
The service doesn’t offer much in terms of security. Instead, it focuses on anonymity. But get this: the inbox you are using may be accessible by someone else who knows the code to that inbox. That’s why they state on their website that it’s best to use a random address by using their “scrambled address” feature. Given that they are providing anonymity, their logging policy is pretty interesting.
They actually do keep logs of the activity on their servers, but they expire within 24 hours. It would likely take a governmental agency a lot longer than 24 hours to successfully request and collect the logs, so that gives us a little peace of mind.
Support:
Keep dreaming. This service doesn’t offer any support as it is only a way to circumvent Internet spam and to send completely anonymous messages. But because it is a web interface to an inbox and a temporary email address, you likely won’t need support in the first place.
Price:
One of the best things about this service is that it is completely free to use. As soon as you visit their website, you won’t ever need to enter login credentials or payment card numbers because the first page you see is essentially the inbox for your new short-term email address!
In Summary
This is a pretty cool service, but I wouldn’t dream of using it to send clandestine messages to other parties. In reality, this service is best used to eat up spam that would find its way to your normal inbox. The next time a website wants an email address and you are concerned about spam or solicitations, just plug in a Guerrilla Mail address instead.
And of course, you can’t go wrong with adding an extra layer of security by getting yourself a VPN, a list of which you can check out here.
