Have you ever had the need to send completely anonymous emails to someone? Perhaps you were trying to prank one of your friends, or wanted to shyly declare your love.

Perhaps you wanted to report illegal activity or abuse, but didn’t want to get caught up in all it. Going to a telephone booth is easy, but how about emails?

There are services on the web – mostly online utilities – that allow you to send anonymous emails. You can send simple messages from, and to everywhere in the world, without having to reveal your true identity.

Today we’ll have a look at those services and present to you the three that stand out, following in no particular order.

AnonEmail

AnonEmail is a service by AnonyMouse. It allows you to send anonymous emails by resending your email several time through random nodes, thus making it impossible to trace back.

In AnonEmail, you can fill in your recipient, the subject, and a short plain-text message. Contrary to many other services AnonEmail does not (seem to) log your IP. However, we do urge you not to use it for anything illegal.

As an extra security measure, AnonEmail will then wait for an unknown period before sending your email along. Why? So no one  will be able to prove your ‘guilt’ based on time/location, or make geographic presumptions based on timezones.

It remains the question whether this particular functionality should be obligatory – as it might be a serious disadvantage if you don’t need it.

Formmail Anonymous Mailer

Formmail Anonymous Mailer, developed by Infinite Monkeys & Company, is a great alternative to AnonEmail.

Apart from the usual functionality, this website allows you to specify a sender’s address as well, allowing you to seemingly send it from a normal mail account. You can also select the specific remailers you want the website to use, from a list of 17 possibilities. Note that the message will take increasingly longer to send when re-rooting it through multiple remailers.

After pressing send, you’ll be able to watch the progress of your message through the different nodes. I used three remailers for a prank mail, and it took about a minute or two to send.

The debatable downside of Formmail Anonymous Mailer is that it logs your IP-addresses to keep you from doing anything stupid. They won’t include it in the emails you send, but if you do anything illegal, they’ll give it up.

Send Anonymous Mail

Like the name implies, this one is a third anonymous mailing utility. Although it lacks the complete anonymity of AnonEmail, and the remailer control of Formmail, this is the most simple one around.

You’ll also be able to specify a sender’s address, a ’supposed’ origin point for your secret message. Nothing else fancy is included, but if you’re looking for simplicity, this is your guy.

Again, this one logs your IP address, so you’ll have another reason not to try anything shady.

Have a blast, but don’t do anything stupid. Which do you prefer, and why? Or do you use another service? Tell us and your fellow MakeUseOf readers about it in the comments below.

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