<- Browser security test Table of Content Thunderbird configuration ->

Anonymous e-mail accounts

The reasons as to why using e-mail accounts together with JonDonym may be:

If you would like to have an anonymous email account, please create a new account first. Choose an E-Mail address of the form anonymous1234abcd@xx.yy, that is "anonymous" + numbers + letters. If all JonDo users create addresses of this form, they are much less distinguishable. You can use JonDo+JonDoFox to create the account in the web interface of the new provider.

Recommended Mail Provider

The following email providers are privacy-friendly and offer secure SSL encryption for POP3 and SMTP. The HTTPS encryption for some webinterfaces is not genuinely secure. We recommed the usage of email clients like Mozilla Thunderbird for email communication to avoid this flaws.

Due to the US PATRIOT Act (especially p. 215ff) and the fourth amendment to the FISA Amendments Act it is possible for US authorities to eavesdrop on the communication of non US citizens without warrant. According to the US authorities it is enough that the servers are located in the US. In the EC study Fighting cyber crime and protecting privacy in the cloud the authors are warning about political surveillance. That's why we can recommend the following email providers only partially.

Security Notes: Information about long term communication partners can be used to feature out your real identity! If you need a highly anonymous e-mail account to do something – may be for whistleblowing – create a new mail account and use it only for this one job. Delete the account, if the job was done and never use it for other communication partners.

GMail and anonymisation services

User of GMail accounts may have problems using TorBirdy and anonymisation services like JonDonym. The Google account security team wrote an answer because of questions by the Tor community:

Hello,

I work for Google as TL of the account security system that is blocking your access.

Access to Google accounts via Tor (or any anonymizing proxy service) is not allowed unless you have established a track record of using those services beforehand. You have several ways to do that:

  1. With Tor active, log in via the web and answer a security quiz, if any is presented. You may need to receive a code on your phone. If you don't have a phone number on the account the access may be denied.

  2. Log in via the web without Tor, then activate Tor and log in again WITHOUT clearing cookies. The GAPS cookie on your browser is a large random number that acts as a second factor and will whitelist your access.

Once we see that your account has a track record of being successfully accessed via Tor the security checks are relaxed and you should be able to use TorBirdy.

Hope that helps,

Google account security team

<- Browser security test Table of Content Thunderbird configuration ->