MySudo - Identity Protection

Review by eFreeware

MySudo is a privacy app from Anonyome Labs that packages a set of separate digital identities, called Sudos, into one place. Each Sudo carries its own email address, its own handle for messaging and calls, and its own private browser, and on paid plans it can also carry a phone number and a virtual card. The idea is that you swap in a Sudo detail wherever a real phone number, email or card would normally go.

That is the reason to consider it. Most of us leak the same phone number and email address into every sign-up form, listing and booking we touch, and those two details become the thread that ties our activity together. MySudo's answer is to split your life into compartments, so a discount sign-up, a second-hand sale and a hotel booking each sit behind a different identity. The app has been on Google Play since May 2020 and sits above half a million installs with a 4.3 average from roughly 3,390 ratings, which suggests a settled product rather than a novelty.

How a Sudo actually works

The core idea is that a Sudo behaves like a small identity of your own rather than a throwaway alias. Its email address works both ways: encrypted messages to other MySudo users, and ordinary email to everyone else. The handle does the same job, and it also carries calls and messages between users of the app, including group and video calls; a phone number, if you have one, covers encrypted chat inside the app plus ordinary calls and texts outside it.

The private browser rounds out the set. It is there for searching without ads and tracking, so the browsing you do inside a Sudo does not feed back into the profile attached to your everyday accounts. The developer describes the phone number as customizable and mutable, which matters more than it sounds: if a number starts attracting spam, you can change it without disturbing the identity around it.

What I like about the structure is that each Sudo is self-contained. The developer's line is that what happens in a Sudo stays in a Sudo, and that framing is the useful part. You are not managing a list of aliases so much as running several small accounts, each with a purpose you decided in advance.

Email, handle, browser and the paid extras

A Sudo is made up of four pieces. There is one email address, one handle, one private browser, and optionally one phone number and one virtual card. The optional items are the ones that require a subscription, and they are also the ones most people will want, since a phone number is what most sign-up forms and marketplaces ask for.

The virtual card is the more interesting inclusion. It stands in for a real bank card or account, so the merchant only ever sees the stand-in. For anyone who has hesitated before typing card numbers into an unfamiliar checkout, that is a meaningful layer. The private browser and the encrypted messaging between app users come as part of the same package rather than as separate tools.

The developer also treats MySudo as one part of a wider family, with a desktop app, a browser extension, a VPN and a service for reclaiming personal information from companies that store and sell it. Those are separate products, and I would treat them as such, but they indicate the direction the company is heading.

What the plans give you

The free download gets you the email address, handle and private browser without a phone number or virtual card. Phone numbers and virtual cards sit behind the paid tiers, and there are three of them. SudoGo is the entry plan: one phone number, three Sudos, 100 messages a month, 30 minutes of talk time and 3 GB of space. SudoPro steps up to three phone numbers, still three Sudos, 300 messages, 200 minutes and 5 GB. SudoMax is the top tier, with nine phone numbers, nine Sudos, unlimited messages and calls, and 15 GB.

The pattern worth noticing is that the number of Sudos does not climb as steeply as the number of phone numbers. SudoGo and SudoPro both allow three identities; only the top plan reaches nine. If your plan is to keep shopping, dating, selling and household admin in separate compartments, the middle tier gives you three of those compartments and three phone numbers to spread across them.

The message and talk-time allowances are the other constraint to weigh. SudoGo's 100 messages and 30 minutes a month suit occasional use, while SudoPro's 300 messages and 200 minutes cover a good deal more. SudoMax removes those caps entirely. Google Play handles the monthly or yearly billing, and a subscription renews on its own unless you cancel more than a day ahead of the period ending; canceling only takes effect when the current term runs out. The app itself is free and carries no ads.

There are geographic limits on the extras. Phone numbers are available for the US, Canada and the UK only, and virtual cards for the US only.

What it asks of you before you start

The onboarding is unusually light on personal detail, and that is deliberate. According to the developer, no email address or phone number is needed to sign up, there is no login or password to register, and a key stored on your device is what guards entry. For a privacy tool, that is the right shape, because the service cannot lose what it never collected.

There is one exception. Personal details are only asked for in two cases: virtual cards, and UK numbers that need a one-time identity check. That is a reasonable trade for a card that has to be tied to a real account, but it does mean the UK number and the virtual card are not anonymous in the way the rest of the app is.

A paid subscription is required for a phone number or a virtual card, and those features also need a location in one of the supported countries. The app has no ads.

Where separate identities earn their keep

The clearest use is anything that involves a form. Signing up for deals and discounts, booking a rental car or a hotel room, buying concert tickets, paying for a coffee: these are all moments where a Sudo email, number or card can stand in for your own. If a mailing list turns noisy, you abandon that Sudo rather than untangling your real inbox.

Marketplaces are the other obvious fit. Selling second-hand goods means publishing contact details to strangers, and a Sudo phone number keeps those conversations away from the number your bank and family use. The same logic applies to dating, ordering food, or any recurring errand where you would rather not be permanently identifiable.

The organizing benefit is easy to underestimate. Because each Sudo has one purpose, the email, messages and calls belonging to it stay together, and you can tell at a glance which part of your life a notification belongs to. That is a different proposition from a single alias you reuse everywhere, which quickly becomes as identifying as the address it replaced.

Updates added the ability to act on several search results at once, deleting or marking them read straight from that screen by swiping one or long-pressing to pick more. Tapping a Sudo number now copies it exactly as shown, and a long-press copies it with or without the country code, which is a small thing that saves fiddling when you are pasting a number into a form.

A fit for compartmentalized lives

MySudo is for people who want their sign-ups, listings and conversations kept apart from their personal details, and who are willing to pay for a phone number to make that work in practice. The free tier gives a genuine taste of the model through email, handle and private browser, while the paid plans add the number and card that most everyday forms expect. If you routinely hand over the same details to businesses you do not fully trust, the structure here addresses that directly.

The trade-offs are clear enough. Phone numbers cover the US, Canada and the UK, virtual cards cover the US, and the number of identities is capped by tier, with nine Sudos only at the top. Message and talk-time limits apply on the two cheaper plans. Those are the boundaries of the product, and they are worth checking against how you intend to use it before committing to a subscription.

Within those boundaries, this is a considered piece of software rather than a gimmick. The identities are genuinely separate, and the companion products show the developer is building around the same idea. For anyone who has grown tired of being the common thread across every service they touch, it is an easy app to justify installing.

What's new in version 2.18.0

This update brings more individual and bulk actions on search results, so you can delete items or mark them as read without leaving the screen—Swipe one, or long-press to select several. Tapping your Sudo number now copies it exactly as shown, or long-press to copy it with or without the country code.