What is an anonymous email address?

An anonymous email address must not be linked to a name or an IP address. When creating an anonymous email address one must not use personally identifiable information as the address. The email provider must not log IP addresses and strip IP addresses from emails sent to qualify as anonymous.

Why is it important to offer free anonymous email?

A lot of people have the need to protect their identity, particularly Human Rights activists, whistleblowers, journalists, and resisting people in oppressive systems. Having a free tool to communicate securely and anonymously can decide between life and death.

To stay anonymous, we highly recommend using the Tor browser when surfing the web.

No phone number for anonymous email registration

Tutanota is one of the very few anonymous email providers that lets you register an email address without a phone number - even when you sign up via Tor. We go to great lengths to allow a completely anonymous sign-up. This makes it more difficult to prevent spammers from signing up. However, our very good sender score shows that it is possible to keep spammers out, even when not asking for phone numbers upon email registration.

Sometimes accounts are automatically marked for approval to prevent spammers from signing up. This is often the case when you sign up via Tor or a VPN, for example, because unfortunately spammers like to abuse Tor. In case your account gets marked for approval, you will be able to start using it within 48 hours after registration once it has been approved. Please simply wait the stated 48 hours as support cannot speed up this process. In case your account has not been approved after two days, you can get in touch with our support team and let them know the email address you registered.

No IP logging, no tracking

By default, Tutanota does not track its users or log IP addresses because we believe that everybody has a right to communicate anonymously with each other.

Tutanota also strips IP addresses from anonymous emails sent and received to protect your right to privacy. In addition, Tutanota does not load images automatically when you click on an email. This makes sure that your IP address and other details about your online usage are not transmitted to the sender of this anonymous email. Only if you trust the sender, you should allow loading of external content such as images.

Monero: Anonymous payment option planned

We have recently added Monero support for donations, and we plan to also add Monero as a payment option. This will be a great step as it will allow users for the first time to pay for Tutanota anonymously, which is of crucial importance to journalists, whistleblowers and human rights activists who want to use the additional features they get with Tutanota's Premium and Pro plans.

With the Monero donation wallet we are gaining experiences on how to handle payments with Monero and how to process these payments automatically.

Please support our fight for privacy by donating to Tutanota.

Fully encrypted and anonymous email for free

Tutanota is not only a free anonymous email service, it is also completely end-to-end encrypted to protect your private data. Tutanota encrypts your entire mailbox and all contacts automatically. Even we as the developers of Tutanota have no access to your data.

When you send an end-to-end encrypted anonymous email with Tutanota, it automatically encrypts subject, content and all attachments. You can send an encrypted email to anybody in the world by simply sharing a password once.

We also strip IP addresses from emails sent and received to protect your privacy. Automatic image loading is blocked in Tutanota to make sure that no one can track you when you read their emails.

No selling of user data

Tutanota does not log IP addresses or track its users. The entire mailbox is encrypted and can only be accessed by the user. Thus, we have no access to any user data. That's how Tutanota is designed: To protect your privacy to the maximum. Therefore, we cannot and will never sell any user data.

Data privacy principles: data minimization & privacy by design

As stated in our privacy policy, Tutanota follows the principles of data minimization and privacy by design. We do not store any unnecessary data about you.

When you register a free Tutanota account, for instance, we only store the email address.

German data protection laws & GDPR to guarantee anonymity

Germany has long had one of the strictest data protection laws in the world, the "Bundesdatenschutzgesetz".

This law has now been updated to adapt requirements stated in the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This regulation puts users in charge of their data and requires companies to protect all personal data they handle. You can read details on how Tutanota can help businesses to send GDPR-compliant emails easily.

In a nutshell, German laws as well as the European GDPR require of Internet services such as Tutanota to store as little data about their users as possible. According to German laws, Tutanota can not be forced to store additional data or change the system in a way that additional data is being stored by request of the authorities. A gag order can also not be issued in Germany.

German society is pro-privacy

As laws may change, we are confident that German society will keep fighting for our right to privacy, even when politicians around the world are pushing for mass surveillance.

In Germany, we have learned why anonymous emails are important: First, we know why privacy matters and, second, mass surveillance can destroy a society and everybody's freedom which Germans had to endure during the time of German separation.

A good example of how Germans are fighting illegal mass surveillance is the fact that the German Constitutional Court has repeatedly declared data retention laws for emails illegal in Germany while many countries, including the USA, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, already have excessive data retention laws.

How to sign up for an anonymous email address with Tutanota

Simply open the Tutanota mail client in any browser with this link. Tutanota does not log IP addresses so you are free to choose, however, the most private browser you can get is the Tor browser.

The screenshot shows the dark theme for the Tutanota web client. Click on Sign-up to register an anonymous email account with Tutanota. Then the sign up page is being displayed like this:

Enter your preferred anonymous email address. Obviously, you should not choose the standard firstname.lastname@ as an address if you want the email address to be truly anonymous. You can also choose the domain by clicking on the three-dot button to the top right corner. Tutanota offers the following domains: tutanota.com, tutanota.de, tutamail.com, tuta.io, and keemail.me.

When entering a password, please choose a strong one and write it down somewhere safe. Also make sure to write down your recovery code. This new feature enables you to reset your anonymous email account yourself in case you loose your password. We at Tutanota have no means to reset your password for security reasons: We have to make sure that no one, not even we, can hijack your anonymous email account.

We also recommend to read our Online Security Guide on how to keep your emails safe from hackers.

Free anonymous email account is being created

Once you have completed the sign up for your anonymous email account with Tutanota, the browser calculates your private key and encrypts it with your password. This makes your password the key to your encrypted and anonymous Tutanota mailbox. Please make sure never to loose your password. Check here how to maximize your password security.

Congratulations, you now own a free anonymous email address.

If you want to take back your privacy completely, read our guide on how to leave Google behind.

Please value the high level of security and privacy you get with your free anonymous email account and donate to support the development of Tutanota.