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Anonymous email is email in which the sender’s address and personal identifying information cannot be viewed by the recipient. Anonymous emails are designed so that the email recipient will remain unaware of the sender’s identity. As a result, they are often used for unethical electronic message sending.
Techopedia Explains Anonymous Email
Some websites provide users with the ability to send emails from their servers and omit their email addresses. Other fields of information that are often omitted from anonymous emails include the reply address, the message path from sender to receiver and the time stamp that identifies when the message was sent.
Anonymous email websites assist users in sending emails so that the recipients remain unaware of where the emails originated. Unfortunately, these types of services can be used for malicious purposes such as sending offensive emails.
Anonymous email methods can also be used by a user who creates a new email address but doesn’t allow personal identifiers to be attached to the account. In other words, bogus contact information may be entered in order to mask the sender’s true identity.
Hackers send anonymous emails in the hope that recipients will think they – and any links they are likely to contain – are legitimate. Once the unknowing user clicks on a link, a virus can be launched. Hackers do this in order to obtain personal information such as banking account PINs, online shopping passwords and other private login information.
