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Email privacy and security
How to protect your email: encrypting messages, checking whether your address was in a breach, spotting fake senders and keeping your number private.
Most email problems people worry about fall into three groups: someone reading your messages, someone pretending to be someone else, and your address leaking in a data breach. These guides cover each one in plain English, with what you can actually do about it.
Free tools for this
Spotting fakes
- Email help
"We can't verify this email came from the sender"
What the Outlook unverified-sender warning means, whether the email is dangerous, and how senders make it go away.
- Email help
Is spam the same as junk mail?
What the words mean, why your email app uses one or the other, and where the word "spam" came from.
- For senders
What is BIMI?
How brands get their logo next to their emails in Gmail, Yahoo and Apple Mail, what it requires, and whether it is worth it.
Encryption
- Email help
How to send encrypted email in Gmail
What Gmail already encrypts, how to use Confidential mode, and when you need S/MIME.
- Email help
How to encrypt email in Outlook
Exact steps for new Outlook, classic Outlook, Outlook.com and Microsoft 365, and what the recipient sees.
Your privacy
- Email help
Was my email in a data breach?
How to check if your email address or passwords were leaked, and the five things to do right away if they were.
- Email help
Free email without a phone number
Which email providers let you sign up without giving a phone number in 2026, and which always ask.
- Email help
Send an email anonymously
The honest options for sending email without your name or real address on it, and what can still identify you.
- Email help
Gmail aliases and plus addressing
Free Gmail aliases with + and dots, how "Send mail as" works, why aliases stop working, and the 2027 change.
Questions people ask
- How can I tell if an email is fake?
- Check the real address behind the sender name, be wary of urgent requests and links, and paste the headers into the header analyzer to see if it passed DMARC.
- Is Gmail encrypted?
- Messages are encrypted in transit between servers that support TLS. End-to-end encryption needs extra tools. See encrypted email in Gmail.