The bureau · Email
Email providers with no phone number to sign up
8 providers here let you register with no phone number and no identifying detail. Posteo rates highest. A phone number is the single most common way an "anonymous" email account gets tied to your real identity. These providers let you create an account without one - read each dossier for whether a number gets demanded later, on Tor, or "on suspicion".
8 matches, ranked
Which private email providers let you sign up without a phone number?
Posteo
The benchmark for how it should be done: sign up with no name, phone or alternate email; pay by cash sent in the post; and an audit by the German federal data-protection regulator confirmed it holds no customer-linkable IP logs. No documented handover on record.
- 1KYC
- No phone
- Zero-access
- Anon. pay
Tuta
The strongest zero-access model in the category - it encrypts the subject line, attachments, contacts and calendar, not just the body, so it cannot read your stored mail. Genuinely no-KYC. A 2020 German court order forced monitoring of named accounts going forward, but even then it could not decrypt existing end-to-end-encrypted mail.
- 1KYC
- No phone
- Zero-access
Mailbox.org
A German, privacy-first provider that allows anonymous signup and anonymous cash payment by post, with PGP and an optional encrypted "Guard" mailbox. No prominent disclosure incident on record. Encryption is opt-in rather than default, like Posteo.
- 1KYC
- No phone
- Anon. pay
addy.io
An open-source email aliasing relay (not a mailbox): it hands out throwaway aliases that forward to your real inbox, can PGP-encrypt the forwarded mail, takes no ID, and accepts Monero. But it holds your real destination address, logs IPs for 3 days, and will disclose your identity to law enforcement on abuse - so it is pseudonymous, not anonymous.
- 1KYC
- No phone
Autistici/Inventati
A 24-year-old Italian activist email collective that requires no identity - you write why you share their anti-fascist/anti-commercial principles, a human approves it, and the request is deleted 15 days later. It holds almost no data by design - a posture forged after Italian police covertly backdoored its server in 2004-05.
- 1KYC
- No phone
Disroot
A Netherlands-based, donation-funded community collective (since 2015) running a fully open-source stack. Sign up with just a username and a deletable verification email - no phone, name or ID - on GDPR soil, with 24-hour logs and Monero accepted. The trade-off is volunteer-run reliability, not privacy.
- 1KYC
- No phone
Riseup
A no-KYC, invite-based activist mail collective that moved to encrypted storage after being served two sealed FBI warrants under a gag order in 2016 - which it complied with rather than face contempt, and its warrant canary lapsed. Mission-trusted, but US jurisdiction is the structural weakness.
- 1KYC
- No phone
cock.li
The most no-KYC mailbox there is - no information at all, Tor-reachable - and the clearest reason no-KYC is not the same as safe. It has no default encryption, had a server disk seized in 2015, and in 2025 a webmail SQL-injection breach exposed more than a million user records. A throwaway inbox, not a secure one.
- 0KYC
- No phone
- Zero-access
Ask the bureau
No phone to sign up — questions
Why does a phone number matter for private email?
A phone number is a hard identifier - it is usually tied to a government ID and a billing address, so handing one over links the mailbox to you permanently. A provider that never asks for one keeps the account identity-free; one that demands it (even only on Tor or "suspicious" signups) does not.
Browse the full email directory or read the methodology.