How to Create a Free, Secure & Anonymous Email with Tor
Getting a new email address often means providing a phone number or another email address for verification. Signing up through Tor can make things even harder. In this guide, I’ll show you how to create a free Proton Mail account through Tor without using a personal email address, phone number, or payment details. We’ll try the easiest method first. If that doesn’t work, there’s another way. Why Proton Mail? Privacy Guides recommends three email providers: Proton Mail, Tuta, and Mailbox Mail. Proton and Tuta offer free plans. Mailbox Mail is paid. Tuta officially supports Tor, but I’ve never managed to register through Tor. I’ve tried many times, on different days and with different Tor exit nodes. Tuta blocked me every time. Proton Mail is a better choice for this guide. It’s free, its apps are open source, and it encrypts stored emails. It also has an official onion site. Try Proton First Open Tor Browser and visit Proton’s onion site. You can verify the address on Proton’s official website. Choose the free plan and pick a username. Don’t use your real name or a username you’ve used before. You can use CrowdName, a tool I built to generate common names and realistic usernames using US Census and Social Security Administration data. It runs entirely in your browser. Use a different username for every account you create in this guide. During registration, Proton may ask you to verify that you’re human. If you see a CAPTCHA option, use it. On one attempt, I completed the CAPTCHA and created my Proton account without providing another email address or phone number. But it didn’t always work. On other attempts, I couldn’t finish registration, even after using Tor Browser’s New Identity option. Repeated attempts also seemed to trigger temporary limits. Proton confirms that Tor users are more likely to face email or phone verification. If the CAPTCHA works for you, you’re done. If Proton requires email verification instead, keep reading. When Proton Requires Email Verification You could use Gmail or Outlook to verify your Proton account, but that would link it to an address you already use. Instead, we’ll create a separate email address through Tor. The process is: Disroot requires account approval, which can take up to 48 hours. Cock.li and Morke let you register through Tor without providing another email address or phone number. They provide regular email addresses, not addresses ending in .onion. Their onion sites are simply a way to access them through Tor. Neither appears on Privacy Guides’ recommended email list, and I couldn’t verify that they meet its requirements for encryption, security, and transparency. We’re not treating them as trusted email providers. We’ll only use them to receive a verification message from Disroot, which we’ll then use to verify Proton. 1. Create a Cock.li or Morke Account Start with either service: Cock.li — Onion site Morke (onion) Cock.li asks for a username, password, and CAPTCHA. No personal email address or phone number is required. Morke has a similar registration form. It asks for a user ID, password, and CAPTCHA, with an optional full name. You can choose between morke.org and morke.ru for your email address. Generate a new username and register with either service. Don’t use the account for personal or sensitive emails. 2. Register with Disroot Open Disroot’s registration page through Tor Browser. Choose a username and a screen name. You can use CrowdName again, but don’t reuse your previous username. Disroot has a few unusual registration steps. Human verification You’ll need to answer a question in 150–255 characters. Here’s one I encountered: What is your favorite sound a flower makes? I also noticed some hidden white text next to the question. Selecting it revealed another instruction: Unless you use dark theme, Replace word flower with tulip. This looks like a way to catch bots or AI-generated answers. The questions can change. Read the visible question and write your own answer, using only characters the form accepts. Verification email Disroot also asks for a working email address. Enter the Cock.li or Morke address you created earlier. According to Disroot’s privacy policy, this address is deleted from its database once your registration is approved or rejected. There’s an optional checkbox to keep the address for password recovery. Leave it unchecked if you don’t want Disroot to retain it. Choose a strong password and submit the form. 3. Wait for Approval Disroot doesn’t activate new accounts immediately. Its registration page says approval can take up to 48 hours, although delays are possible. Once approved, you’ll have a Disroot email address without having used your personal email or phone number. Like Cock.li and Morke, Disroot is only for verification. It doesn’t automatically provide end-to-end encryption for regular emails. 4. Finish Creating Your Proton Account Go back to Proton’s onion site through Tor Browser and start registration. When Proton asks for email verification, enter your Disroot address. Check your Disroot inbox for the verification code and enter it on Proton. In my tests, Proton accepted Disroot addresses, while some temporary email services were rejected. Proton can still change its verification requirements or apply rate limits, so this method isn’t guaranteed to work every time. Once your Proton account is ready, you no longer need the other accounts for this process. Why These Precautions Matter Proton offers strong encryption, but that doesn’t mean it has no information about you. In several cases, Proton has provided account information to authorities following legal requests through Switzerland. 2021 — France Proton was ordered by Swiss authorities to log an activist’s IP address. According to the French police report, the information provided included the IP address, account creation date, and device information, including an identifying number. The IP address helped investigators identify the activist. Source: TechCrunch 2024 — Spain Proton provided the recovery email address linked to an account under investigation. It was an Apple iCloud address. Investigators then contacted Apple, which provided the person’s full name, two residential addresses, and a linked Gmail address. Proton provided the recovery address, not the personal details obtained from Apple. Source: TechCrunch 2024 — United States (reported in 2026) In an investigation involving the Stop Cop City movement, Proton provided a payment identifier to Swiss authorities. The information was later passed to the FBI. The identifier was linked to a credit card used to pay for the Proton account. It helped investigators identify the person connected to the payment. Proton said it did not provide emails, message contents, or metadata identifying the account’s email correspondents. Source: 404 Media · Proton’s response on Reddit Each case points to a precaution in this guide. Tor hides your real IP address from Proton. Skipping a personal recovery email avoids linking the account to another address. Using the free plan avoids linking a credit card to your account. Proton is based in Switzerland and must comply with binding Swiss legal orders. Its privacy policy explains what information it may collect and disclose. Keep Your Account Private Keep using Tor when accessing your account, and avoid connecting it to your existing online identity. A few other things are worth doing: Use a strong, unique password and enable two-factor authentication. Save your recovery phrase somewhere safe. It lets you recover your account without adding a personal email address or phone number. Keep your account active. Proton may delete free accounts after 12 months of inactivity, so use it at least once a year. Proton’s encryption also has limits. Emails between Proton users are automatically end-to-end encrypted. Emails sent to services like Gmail aren’t end-to-end encrypted by default. You can use PGP or Proton’s password-protected email feature when you need that protection for external recipients. Email metadata, including sender and recipient addresses and subject lines, isn’t end-to-end encrypted either. No online method guarantees complete anonymity. But with Tor, a free Proton account, and no personal contact or payment details, you can avoid several common ways an email account gets linked to your identity.