Questions About Disposable Email

A signup form said this address is not allowed. What does that mean?

One website consulted one list of domains and found the part after the at sign on it. Mail to the address still arrives normally, and other sites with a different list, or no list at all, will keep accepting it. Choosing another domain and trying again usually settles it in seconds.

Asking a blocklist to remove a domain does not work, because the entry is accurate and everyone involved knows it. The layers a form can run through are described in how sites check an address.

How long does a mailbox on this site stay alive?

Without an account, twenty four hours counted from the last time you touched it, and requesting a new address wipes the previous one on the spot rather than after a delay. With a free account the mailbox survives seven days from your last sign in, and any individual message is kept for up to thirty days inside that window.

What happens to mail that arrives after the mailbox is gone?

It is dropped on arrival and never written down anywhere. Nothing is sent back to whoever mailed it either, because a reply saying the address is unknown would tell an outsider which addresses on our domains are real and which are not.

Can any of this be traced back to me?

The address itself leads nowhere: we never asked for your name, your phone or another mailbox, so there is nothing stored to connect it to. Everything around the address is a different story. The site you signed up to sees your IP address and your browser, Cloudflare terminates connections in front of us and sees visitor addresses under its own retention rules, and your internet provider knows who was behind a given connection.

The full chain, including what our own database has no field for, is laid out in what can and cannot be traced.

Is it legal to use an address like this?

Yes, in every jurisdiction we are aware of. No law prohibits receiving mail at an address that expires. What can be unlawful is a specific act committed while using one, and that act would be equally unlawful from a permanent mailbox.

A site's own terms are a separate layer with separate consequences: they can forbid something the law permits, and the penalty is a closed account rather than a court. The distinction is worked through in the piece on legality, and the most common case, opening a second account somewhere, gets its own guide.

Why is the domain of this website not what I get by default?

Because it burns fastest. The site's own name appears on every page a scraper reads, so it reaches the blocklists sooner than any other domain we run, and it is also the one domain we cannot swap out when that happens without moving the whole site. Addresses come from the rotating stock instead, and that stock is replaced as it wears out.

What does registering change?

Four things, and registration itself is free. You get ten mailboxes running at once instead of one, domains that are never printed on a public page, working attachments, and mailboxes that belong to your account rather than to whoever knows the address.

The unpublished domains are the part people underestimate. A domain nobody displays takes considerably longer to reach a blocklist, which is the whole reason those domains stay behind a sign in.

Who else can open a guest mailbox?

Anybody who types the same address into the field. A guest mailbox has no password and no owner: the address is the only key, and short addresses that somebody picked by hand get guessed sooner or later. For a discount code that hardly matters. For anything you would not want read over your shoulder, sign in and use an account mailbox, which is private.

Can a deleted or expired message be brought back?

No. There is no archive, no backup and no recycle bin, so nothing exists to restore from a minute after deletion. This is deliberate rather than an oversight: a service able to produce your old mail on request is also a service that can be made to produce somebody else's.

Can I reply to a message or send mail from my address?

No, and this will not change later. Addresses here receive and nothing more. Anonymous sending would turn the service into a spam relay in a matter of days, its domains would be refused everywhere in a matter of weeks, and the receiving side would go down along with them.

Is there an API or any way to automate this?

No, and none is planned. Scripted address generation is the single fastest way to burn a domain, and every domain burned that way is one fewer working address for people using the site by hand. If you need mail in an automated test, run a local mail catcher, which is better suited to it anyway.

Can I use this for a bank, a government portal or an employer?

No. Anything you might need to get back into needs an address that outlives the account, and this one is built to do the opposite. The same goes for shipping, domain registration, healthcare and anything attached to money or identity.

The right tool there is a permanent mailbox or a forwarding alias, and the difference between the kinds of throwaway address is mostly a difference in how long each one lasts.

Are attachments available?

With a free account, yes. Files arrive with the message, are stored apart from it, and are deleted at the same moment the message is, so an attachment never outlives the mail it came with. Guest mailboxes show the message text without the files.

What does this cost?

Nothing. The service is free, an account is free, and there is no paid tier waiting behind a trial countdown. Advertising pays for it, placed so that it never covers the interface or shifts the page while you are reading.

Free is a business model rather than a favour, and the models differ sharply in what they do with your mail, which is why who pays for a free inbox is worth knowing before you pick any service in this category.