How Temp Mail Works
Open the page, get an address
The moment you arrive, the service generates a random address on one of its domains and shows it to you. There is no form to fill in and nothing to confirm.
Messages arrive on their own
The page holds a live connection to the server. When a message is delivered, it appears in your inbox without a refresh. If your network or a corporate proxy cuts that connection, the page quietly falls back to checking every few seconds, and the connection indicator tells you which mode it is in.
Your inbox is not open to anyone who guesses the address
Knowing the address is never sufficient. Your browser holds a private authorisation created with the inbox. To open the same inbox from a different browser you need the separate recovery code shown when it was created — which is why the service asks you to save it.
Everything expires
The header above your inbox shows two times: when the address stops receiving mail, and when the stored messages are deleted. Background jobs enforce both. You can also delete a message, or the whole inbox, immediately.
Messages are treated as hostile
Every message is stripped of scripts, embedded frames, forms and unsafe links before it is stored. Remote images are blocked so that opening a message does not report back to the sender. The message itself is displayed inside an isolated frame that cannot run code or reach the rest of the page.
Where the address actually comes from
Two different things sit behind the address you are given, and it is worth knowing which one you have.
A random address is issued on a domain this service owns and runs. Mail for that domain is delivered to our own server, matched to the exact address that was issued, and shown only on the page that issued it.
A temporary Gmail address is a real @gmail.com address: a dotted variant of a mailbox we operate. Gmail ignores dots, so j.o.h.n@gmail.com and john@gmail.com are one mailbox to Google but different strings to a signup form. You see only the mail addressed to your own variant — never the mailbox owner's, and never another visitor's.
Both are receive-only. Neither is a Google Account, and neither can send.
Can a temporary address be traced back to you?
Not through the address itself. There is no name, no password and no account attached to it, and nothing links one address to another. What the service does keep is deliberately small and is listed in full in the privacy policy: your IP address is stored only as a one-way hash for rate limiting and abuse handling, never in readable form.
The honest limit is that the sender still sees whatever you type into their form. A disposable address stops a site building a profile around your real mailbox; it does not make you anonymous to a site you hand your real name to.
What it deliberately cannot do
It cannot send, reply to or forward mail — there is no facility anywhere in the service to do so, which is exactly why handing the address to a stranger's signup form is safe.
It also cannot be recovered once its timers run out. The address is retired permanently and never reissued, so a code that arrives after expiry is gone. If you need longer, extend the inbox before it lapses, or use an address you control. The FAQ covers the edge cases; 10 minute mail is the same tool framed around a deliberately short life.