Anonymous E-mail and Web Communication Tools

Have you ever wanted to send a funny e-mail to someone without revealing who it was from? Or did you have something that needed to be said to someone, but you didn't want them to know it was you? There are websites that will allow you send anonymous mail messages. Be forewarned, however, that most of these sites log your IP address (and therefore aren't truly anonymous), and are bound by law to surrender their log files to law enforcement should it be discovered that someone has used the service in an unlawful manner.

Will Self-Destruct (http://www.willselfdestruct.com/) easily stands out as the best free, anonymous e-mail service on the web. Will Self-Destruct allows users to create and send anonymous e-mail messages that self-destruct in a sender-specified amount of time (in seconds). The site's proprietors pledge that they don't retain messages after they've been read and don't log IP addresses or other information about senders or recipients. Will Self-Destruct seems to offer the best of all worlds to both users and message recipients.

Deadfake (http://www.deadfake.com/) is a good general purpose anonymous e-mail service. One catch is that your faked FROM address has to contain a valid domain, or your message won't be sent. The owner of the site warns: "Don't send any spam or other illegal things from this site. Email is never really fully anonymous (check the FAQ for more info). It's also bad karma, and I will track you down and bite you." Best not to tempt fate...

RatMail (http://www.ratmail.com/) targets their appeal to those with a slighly darker and more sinister sense of humor. RatMail encourages users of the service to, well, rat on people. Naturally, this service isn't recommended if you need to communicate a serious message to someone anonymously.

Anonymize Your Phone Number

You can often find a lot of additional information based on a phone number. Just as there are services which will create pointers to a valid e-mail address while hiding them from the world, there are websites that allow you to do similar things with phone numbers. This can be handy for use with classified ads in your local newspaper or, as the name implies, with Craig's List. There are a number of startup services that offer the same or similar services for a nominal subscription charge, but I'll cover just the free ones here:

Craigsnumber (http://www.craigsnumber.com/) is an up and coming service that will create an alias phone number with a three digit extension that points to any phone number you tell it to. Craigsnumber currently offers the option to create a local alias telephone number based in one of 23 cities throughout the United States. These include Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Portland (Oregon), San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C. Numbers can be created which expire in one hour, one week or one month.

Jangl (http://www.jangl.com/) is a beta online service that lets users create a widget that can then be incorporated into blogs, MySpace pages, signature files and anywhere else that permits embedded HTML and/or Flash code. People can click on the widget on your blog or web page and generate an alias phone number that they can call which connects them with your number. Callers will not know the real phone number they are calling, and the calling number will not be revealed to call recipients. First time callers will have to record an introduction message. This enables Jangl users to screen calls. Jangl is an interesting idea, if one with potentially eerie consequences.

Miscellaneous

Contactify (http://www.contactify.com/) allows you to create a URL that utilizes a contact form to generate e-mail messages which are then sent to whatever address you specified when you created the link. You can create as many links as you like, modify link attributes (such as the e-mail address that they point to), and delete links. Using the service, you can receive e-mail without ever giving out your e-mail address. How nifty is that?