Questions About This Mailbox

How long does a mailbox here stay open?

A guest mailbox runs for twenty four hours, and the clock restarts every time you open it, so a mailbox you check on Friday is still there on Saturday. A free account stretches that to seven days from your last sign in, with individual messages kept up to thirty days inside that window.

The clock is generous for what this box is for. A verification code arrives in seconds and a delivery receipt within the hour, and anything that takes longer than a day to reach you probably belongs in your permanent mailbox instead.

What happens the moment I ask for a new address?

The previous mailbox and everything in it are deleted on the spot, not queued for later. There is no grace period and no undo, so finish reading before you press the button.

This catches people waiting on a slow verification code. If nothing has arrived yet, keep the tab open and wait; requesting a fresh address destroys the mailbox the code is flying toward.

Is a guest mailbox private to me?

No. The address is the only key, and anyone who types it into this site sees exactly what you see. That is the trade for a mailbox that needs no password, no signup and no proof of anything.

Short, obvious addresses get opened by strangers regularly, sometimes by people simply guessing common words. If the mail arriving would embarrass you in somebody else's hands, sign in and use an account mailbox, which is locked to your account alone.

Can I answer a message or send mail from this address?

No, and no future version will add it. Addresses on this service take delivery and stop there.

The reason is survival rather than laziness. Let anonymous visitors send, and within a week the service is a spam relay; within a month every one of its domains is refused everywhere, which kills the receiving half too. Receiving only is what keeps the addresses working.

Why is the site's own domain not what I get by default?

Because it burns faster than anything else we run. The name tempmailbox.net appears on every page of this website, so the scrapers that build blocklists find it immediately, and it is also the one domain we cannot quietly retire when that happens.

Addresses come from a separate rotating pool instead, and domains leave that pool as they wear out. It is a rotation you never have to think about, and it is the main reason a form accepts your address at all.

What does a free account add?

Four things: ten mailboxes running at once instead of one, domains that never appear on a public page, working attachments, and mailboxes that belong to you rather than to whoever knows the address.

The hidden domains matter more than people expect. A domain that is never printed anywhere takes far longer to reach a blocklist, which is precisely why those domains sit behind a sign in. Registration is free and there is nothing to buy afterwards.

Do attachments arrive?

With an account, yes. Files come down with the message, are stored separately from it, and are erased at the same moment the message is, so nothing outlives the mail it travelled with. Executable file types are refused outright and never written to disk.

Without an account you see the message text and no files.

Is there an API I can call?

No, and none is coming. Automated access is the fastest way to burn a domain, and each domain burned that way costs everyone else working addresses.

If you need mail inside an automated test suite, a local mail catcher running next to your code is the better tool anyway: it is faster, it needs no network, and nothing you generate there affects anybody.

Will a code from my bank arrive here?

It might arrive, and you should still never point a bank at this address. The problem is not delivery, it is the day the bank needs to reach you again: a password reset, a fraud alert, a locked card, all sent to a mailbox that stopped existing months ago.

The same applies to government portals, employers, healthcare, shipping, domain registrars and anything holding money. A recovery address has to outlive the account it protects, and this one is engineered to do the opposite. If you have already done it, the recovery order is here.

Can a deleted message be brought back?

No. There is no archive, no backup and no bin to fish it out of, so a minute after deletion there is nothing left to restore.

That is a deliberate design choice with a second effect worth knowing: a service that can produce your old mail on request can also be made to produce somebody else's. Holding nothing is the only version of that promise we can actually keep.

Does using this address hide my IP address?

No. It hides your permanent mailbox, which is a different thing entirely. The site you sign up to still sees your address and your browser, and so does every company between you and it.

If you want your network identity covered, that is a job for a VPN or Tor, and a throwaway inbox neither helps nor hurts it. What our own side of the connection stores, and what it has no field for, is set out on the privacy page.

A website refused the address I got here. Why?

That site checked the part after the at sign against a list of known disposable domains and found it. The mailbox is fine and mail still reaches it; one particular form declined to accept it.

Pick a different domain and try again, which settles it most of the time. Asking for the domain to be removed from such a list never works, because the listing is accurate and everyone involved knows it.

What does this cost, and how is it paid for?

Nothing, and by advertising. There is no paid tier, no trial that expires, and nothing deliberately crippled to sell you a better version, because there is no better version to sell.

Ads sit in space reserved before they load, so the page does not jump while you are reading, and no ad is allowed to imitate a button on the site. That is the whole arrangement.

Can I use this address on an account I check every day?

No, and this is the mistake worth avoiding above all others. Mailboxes here expire by design, and any account attached to one loses its way back in the day that happens.

Keep this box for the single-use traffic: a download link, a discount code, a forum you will visit once. Anything you will still care about next month belongs in a mailbox you control and intend to keep, and the guides are about running that one properly.