5 Best Temporary Disposable Email Services in 2023

Today, it is almost impossible to log into a site or an app without them demanding you tell them your email address. This often results in a flood of spam. Besides, the more places that know your email address, the greater a threat to your privacy. And who knows how your email address is getting shared or sold off to third parties.

In the past, it was easy to enter a fake address whenever we wanted. But that doesn’t work any more, since most sites now send a verification email that you need to respond to.

Today there are disposable email services that can help us deal with this problem. These services give you a disposable email address to use instead of your real email address.

Let’s look at the best temp email address services. Then we can finish up by looking at some frequently-asked questions.

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Here are the best temporary and disposable email services:

Burner Mail – Fast and capable temporary email address service

At its most basic, Burner Mail consists of Chrome and Firefox browser extensions that let you generate and use a disposable email addresses (also known as burner email address or a temp email address). Messages sent to these addresses get forwarded to the temporary email address you specify, while preventing the sender from learning what your real address is.

Once you install the Burner Mail browser extension, Burner Mail will display its burning envelope icon in most any email address field that appears on the screen. Click the icon to insert one of your disposable mail addresses in the field and you’re done.

If you need more than this basic capability, you’ll want to visit the Burner Mail Dashboard (click the Dashboard button in the browser extension to get there fast).

The free version of Burner Mail gives you up to 5 burner addresses, while the paid version gives you an unlimited number of them. As you can see in the image above, the paid version now also gives you the ability to send messages using the burner addresses you create.

A Burner Mail paid subscription costs $3.29 per month, billed at $34.99 annually.

Website: https://burnermail.io

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10minutemail – When a quickie is all you need

Sometimes all you want is a temporary email address that lasts long enough to receive a verification message. If you know that your relationship with a certain website is going to be more of a one-night stand than a long-term relationship, the anonymous 10MinuteMail site is where you need to go.

Browse over to the 10minutemail website, and you’ll see something like the image above: an odd-looking temporary email address, and a timer ticking down from 10 minutes.

Click the copy button to the left of the email address (but don’t close this browser window), then paste the address into whatever form needs, “your best email address.” But be quick about it! The clock is ticking.

Now all you have to do is wait. Once that verification email arrives, it will appear in the 10minutemail window below the timer. Click it to open it, then click the button or whatever you need to do.

Then just walk away. Close the browser window. 10minutemail will release the temporary email address and purge any and all messages sent to that address.

Don’t worry if you need more than 10 minutes to seal the deal. If you need more time to get it done, just keep clicking the Get 10 more minutes button until you get what you came here for.

Website: https://10minutemail.com

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EmailOnDeck – A strong temp mail service that protects your privacy

While 10minutemail has the simplest process possible for getting a disposable email address (just go to their page and your email address is waiting for you), EmailOnDeck is almost as easy. To get a disposable email address from EmailOnDeck takes two steps once you go to their webpage:

1. Complete the CAPTCHA.
2. Click the Get Email button.

Use this disposable email address anywhere you don’t want to use your real address. Incoming messages appear in your web browser similarly to 10minutemail. You can receive unlimited messages, but can only send messages to other EmailOnDeck users, unless you upgrade to EmailOnDeck Pro.

This service offers some real advantages. You can instantly create a new disposable email address. While the system automatically purges your messages every few hours, you retain control of your throwaway email address for a while.

According to the website, there isn’t a specific amount of time that your address will last, but it should be more than an hour and likely less than a day. You can eliminate the address immediately by clicking the red button to the right of the email address in the image below:

The free version of EmailOnDeck supports one disposable email account at a time. If you want more simultaneous accounts, or want to continue to control the address(es) for the long term, you can upgrade to EmailOnDeck Pro. Pro gives you up to 100 email accounts, and lets you send messages to anyone. There is also a recovery option, although it is not guaranteed to work.

If you want to go Pro, you’ll need to be a little crypto savvy. That’s because EmailOnDeck only accepts payment in Bitcoin. At the time of this review, the cost of a month of EmailOnDeck Pro was 0.003070 Bitcoin. Hopefully the EmailOnDeck team will adjust prices due to fluctuating Bitcoin valuations.

Website: https://www.emailondeck.com

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Guerrilla Mail – Receive and send disposable email messages

Guerrilla Mail provides a quality disposable email service while fixing some limitations that we have discussed with other temporary email providers. These fixes include the ability to

• choose from multiple email domains
• change your Inbox ID to whatever you want
• send disposable emails and receive regular emails

Getting started with Guerrilla Mail can be confusing. Guerrilla Mail gives you options to customize your disposable email address, along with a scrambled version of your address. Guerrilla Mail doesn’t use any passwords or signup process, so anyone who knows your Inbox ID can use your account. The server deletes all messages after one hour, but Guerrilla Mail is not for any personal / private / important messages.

We recommend you hit the WTF! button before you start using Guerrilla Mail, as the site does a great job explaining all this.

One thing we really like about this service is the ability to send email as well as receive it. You can even include attachments to the messages you send. Messages you compose are deleted after 24 hours.

This feature is still in beta, but it works. Recipients of your messages see the scrambled version of your disposable email address rather than the plain one. It looks odd, but keeps your Inbox ID secret.

To enhance your security, Guerrilla Mail forces an HTTPS connection between your device and their site, meaning no one can spy on the messages going back and forth between them.

The email addresses you create in Guerrilla Mail last forever, although the messages in them are automatically deleted after an hour.

Website: https://www.guerrillamail.com/

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Maildrop – Temporary email with spam filter

Maildrop is another no-nonsense disposable email service. As they say on the site:

Maildrop is a free throwaway email address. It’s temporary. It’s transient. It’s disposable. It’s meant for those times when you don’t want to give out your real address. Just give someone any email address in the maildrop.cc domain, come back here, put in the email address, and you can see that inbox.

Maildrop has no signups.

Maildrop has no passwords.

Maildrop is designed for no security.

Maildrop is designed for little to no privacy.

To use Maildrop, just go to the site, and fill in the template on the top right. All Maildrop disposable emails end in “@maildrop.cc” so all you have to do is fill in the inbox name and you are ready to roll. Say you enter the inbox name: catlitter. You can give the email address catlitter@maildrop.cc to whomever you don’t want them to know your real email address. Come back to Maildrop later and enter catlitter in the same field, then hit the View Inbox button to see what turned up.

Remember that Maildrop gives you little to no privacy. Anyone who enters the word catlitter and hits the View Inbox button will be able to see your messages too. But that’s okay since you won’t be using this email address for anything important or personal, right?

Note on privacy: Of course, we are all using these services for the purpose of keeping our main inboxes private, not necessarily the disposable inboxes. And from that perspective, Maildrop has its place for the privacy-focused user.

Remember that Maildrop has strong limits on what messages it accepts, and how many it accepts. It also filters incoming messages for spam. The most important things to note are:

• No attachments are accepted
• The inbox only holds 10 messages
• Maildrop can clear out old messages as necessary

Maildrop gives you an alias address that you can share with anyone. Messages sent to the alias address will make it into the correct inbox, but no one will be able to figure out your original Maildrop email address from the alias address.

Worried that you won’t be able to come up with a good throwaway address when you need one? Maildrop provides a tool that generates email addresses for you, right on the front page of the site. You can also find some good tips for generating good email addresses at the bottom of this page.

Website: https://maildrop.cc

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Now let’s examine some of the most frequently-asked questions about temporary email services.

What is a temporary disposable email service?

A temporary email service provides disposable email addresses and mailboxes for those times when you need to use an email address that cannot be traced back to you.

Do you need a disposable email address?

These days many websites and apps require that you enter and confirm an email address. Why? So they can make money by selling information about you. Using a disposable temporary email address with unimportant sites and apps prevents them from seeing your real mail address.

Is it legal to give a fake email address?

Absolutely! Just because some website or app says they want your “best email address” it doesn’t mean you have to give it to them. Even the California Attorney General’s office recommends using a disposable email address to protect your privacy during sensitive medical procedures.

Is it safe to use a disposable email service?

A disposable email address is safe in the sense that it keeps undesirables from getting their hands on your email address. It is unsafe in that emails sent to that address will quickly disappear unless you manually save them.

And with some services, your email is not protected in any manner. That is, anyone who knows your disposable email address can get access to your Inbox before it is deleted. Finally, you need to trust the service not to read your mail themselves.

You can use any of our recommended temporary email services safely as long as you assume that your messages are not private and only use the service for unimportant, non-personal activities.

Will disposable emails be blocked?

Some websites and apps can tell that you are using a disposable emails service, and they try to block it.

There are services like Block-Disposable-Email.com that maintain databases of the domains that send disposable emails. But they certainly are not infallible.

If you get blocked when using one disposable address, just generate another and try again.

Conclusion: Use a temporary email service in 2023

The tendency of virtually every website and app to demand your email address is an abuse of your email privacy. And this trend is not getting any better as more websites restrict access to content unless you register as a member or signup to some email marketing “newsletter” list.

Since not dealing with anyone who requires your email address isn’t a viable solution, handing out disposable or temporary email addresses is a great defensive move. Each of the services we describe here has its own way of doing things. But each of them has the power to protect a bit of your privacy by making it easy to give email-demanders a temporary email address that isn’t linked to your real email address.

While all of these services work well, we’ve seen that there are some out there who can detect and block some of the email domains used by temporary / disposable email services. Since they are all free, why not bookmark all five of them. That way, if your favorite can’t get the job done at a particular site, you can call on one of the others.

Services like Burner Mail, 10minutemail, EmailOnDeck, Guerrilla Mail, and Maildrop make fighting back simple, and free of charge too! Take advantage of the gift of extra privacy they offer.

This guide on temporary disposable email was last updated January 2, 2023.