Need to send an anonymous e-mail? Ubuntu app ‘AnonMail’ let’s you do just that.
Sending e-mails anonymously isn’t something most of us need to – or should – do. But there are times when something needs sending sans social awkwardness, or free from repercussion.
AnonMail, with its clean, clear and uncluttered interface, makes doing this easy – something that its developer, Alex Cristian, was adamant to achieve.
“I was frustrated with how difficult it was to send anonymous emails with untraceable sources,” Alex says.
“Even assuming you had the know-how to do it, you still had to use telnet (and if you did, telnet wouldn’t allow you to send attachments) or even worse, use some obscure website to forward the message for you while risking getting your IP logged or, in the worst case, your message read by a third party.
It just wasn’t safe. I just thought there should be another way to bring anonymous emailing to everyone, so I built an app to do it – unifying the power and privacy of the command-line and the ease of use of websites.”
Features
Although it’s not a traditional e-mail client the developer has made sure basic e-mail features are included in the app. These include:
- File Attachment support
- Multiple recipients
- HTML parsing
- GMail, Aol, Yahoo!, etc presets
- Custom send date
Using
Using AnonMail is incredibly straightforward. You enter the sender details (which don’t have to be “real”, remember), then the recipient details (which do have to be “real”).
Then, depending on the service the recipient uses, select the matching preset from the ‘Settings’ tab.
Switch back to the ‘Message View’ to add an attahcmement, enter your message and, finally, hit ‘Send’.
Review
Anonmail does what it sets out to: it sends mail anonymously.
It might not be the best looking application (largely due to it being written in Java) it is straightforward to use and light on system resources.
There’s no Ubuntu integration provided, but aside from using the notification system to display the ‘sent message confirmation’, there’s little need for it to.
Buy AnonMail
AnonMail is available to buy from the Ubuntu Software Center priced at $2.99.
It supports Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10. Requires the Java Runtime to be installed.
AnonMail
Handy
Don’t let the fact that it’s written in Java put you off. AnonMail is a simple, capable and, for those concerned with privacy, indispensable tool.