Holy rabbit hole, batman! I spent around 3 hours (so far) trying to create a Tuta email that has no trace of my identity on it (for the fun of it?). I underestimated the level of complexity that required and honestly, I’m not even sure it will be completely anonymous.
As part of my de-googling and privacy-focused mission recently, I realized using Gmail was no longer a viable option for me to significantly reduce my personal footprint online. I used Proton mail a few years ago and liked it, but my concern over privacy waned and I couldn’t justify the annual expense. Fast forward to two weeks ago when I created a new Proton mail account. I didn’t know much about anonymity online at that point (I’ve spent many hours since then learning about it).
Yesterday, I read a post on lemmy about how an activist in the US was apprehended by the FBI because they requested information on this person’s Proton mail account (which they used publicly) from the Swiss government. Since the Swiss government has a legal agreement with the US, they sent an official request to Proton and Proton was forced to send the activist’s payment info – which is how the FBI tracked down the activist’s real identity.
Now let me clarify – I have zero intention of doing anything illegal online. I want privacy and anonymity for the sake of personal privacy every human being is entitled to.
Thus, I decided to see if I can actually create an anonymous email account on Tuta – a German based email provider who primarily focuses on privacy and security. However, to get a Tuta account with enough storage space to import all of my old emails from Gmail, I had to set up a paid account.
The only payment options available on Tuta’s website are credit card and PayPal. Obviously neither of those were an option if I wanted to become truly anonymous. After further research, I discovered a website that sells Tuta gift cards and they accept moreno crypto currency.
That sounded easy enough. I mean, I have a Coinbase account (bit mistake for anonymity – I know now) and generally understand how this all works.
With my focus solely engaged on remaining anonymous, I realized I had to use my new Pixel 7 with GrapheneOS and installed Cake Wallet. I even set up a new user profile solely for accessing the Cake Wallet app.
Setting up Cake with a moreno wallet was easy. Buying moreno anonymously, however, is not.
I realized one way to get moreno anonymously is to buy eth on coinbase then send it to my moreno wallet. That was a pain in the ass. Clearly I understood less than I thought about crypto.
It’s a tedious process and absolutely does not enable anonymity. I had to share a photo of my id with Coinbase, then record a video of myself, to prove my identity before the request would send. Regardless, it’s an added layer of anonymity because the gift card I’m using to buy a 1-year subscription to Tuta doesn’t have my name associated with it.
I clearly have way more to learn. Although this was tedious, I really enjoyed it because I learned something new. De-googling seems to be a complex, almost never-ending process but it’s one I am passionate about.