Temporary Email
Temporary Email Explained: How Disposable and 10-Minute Inboxes Work
What a temporary email address is, how a 10-minute receive-only inbox works on this site, and how the names disposable, burner, throwaway, and tempmail relate.
A temporary email address is a short-lived inbox you use instead of the address you actually live in. On this site it lasts 10 minutes, it can only receive mail, and it cannot be recovered after the timer ends or you delete it.
People search for the same idea under several names: disposable email, burner email, throwaway email, 10-minute mail, tempmail, temp mail, and sometimes “fake email.” Those labels describe the job—catch a message without handing over a long-term inbox—not seven different products. This article is the single explanation for that job, including how this particular inbox is built.
If you only need the steps, use how to create a temporary email address. If you need help deciding whether to use one at all, read when you should and should not use temporary email.
What it is, in practice
You open the homepage inbox, create a mailbox, and copy an address on the mail.10mintempemail.com domain. You paste that address into a form that is allowed to use a disposable destination. Incoming messages show up in the same browser tab while the countdown is running. When 10 minutes elapse—or you delete the mailbox—the session cookie stops working and stored mail is cleaned up.
That is the whole product loop. There is no password, no saved address book, no sending, and no “restore my old inbox” button.
Other names for the same job
| Name people search | What they usually mean |
|---|---|
| Temporary email / temp email / temp mail | A short-lived inbox for one-off inbound mail |
| Disposable email | Emphasis on throwing the address away after the task |
| 10-minute mail | The same idea with a visible, short timer |
| Burner email | Slang borrowed from prepaid phones: use once, drop |
| Throwaway email | Forum wording for an address you do not plan to keep |
| Tempmail | A compressed label for the same category |
| “Fake email” | Informal wording. The address is real enough to receive mail; it is not a permanent identity |
A burner phone can still place calls. This inbox cannot send. That difference matters: a receive-only design is meant to catch inbound verification mail, not to impersonate a full mailbox.
How this 10-minute inbox works
The public site and the mail pipeline are separate Cloudflare Workers.
- Create. The web app generates a random local-part, stores mailbox metadata in Cloudflare D1, and sets an HttpOnly session cookie that proves you own that mailbox.
- Receive. Cloudflare Email Routing delivers inbound messages to a mail-ingest Worker. That Worker accepts mail only for an active, unexpired local-part on this domain.
- Store. Message metadata goes in D1. The parsed body (and allowed attachments) go in a private R2 bucket. Browsers never receive object keys.
- Read. The homepage polls a same-origin JSON API. The API requires the session cookie. HTML is sanitized before it is stored and again before it is shown.
- Expire. The mailbox is created with a 10-minute lifetime. A scheduled cleanup job marks expired mailboxes, deletes stored message objects, then removes empty mailbox rows.
Unknown, expired, oversized, or full mailboxes are rejected. Duplicate deliveries are ignored. Those rules exist so leftover addresses do not collect mail after you have moved on.
For the implementation write-up, see how we built a receive-only 10-minute inbox.
What it does not do
- Send, reply, or forward
- Survive after expiry or deletion
- Bypass another website’s disposable-domain blocklist
- Replace a permanent address, alias, or password manager
- Hide mail from the operator while the mailbox is alive
If a website rejects the domain, respect that restriction. Use a permitted permanent address or alias, or skip the signup. This site does not explain how to defeat those blocks.
Temporary, alias, or regular mail?
A 10-minute inbox is one option among three common choices. Use temporary email vs aliases vs regular email when you need the comparison table. The short version:
- Regular email when you must keep the account, recover a password, or prove identity later
- Alias when mail should still land in an inbox you own, but you do not want to publish the real local-part
- Temporary email when the other site permits a disposable address and you will not need the messages later
Responsible use
Use a disposable inbox to keep a primary address off low-stakes forms where the destination site allows it, and to test systems you own or are authorized to test. Do not use it to bypass payment, account limits, bans, or verification rules, or to misrepresent who you are.
The full rules are in the Acceptable Use Policy. Report misuse on Report abuse.
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