What is a disposable email address?

A disposable email address — also called a temporary email, throwaway email, burner email, or fake email — is a short-lived inbox that lets you receive mail without revealing your real address. After a short period the inbox and any messages it received are deleted.

How is Fake Email different from temp-mail.org, 10minutemail, or Guerrilla Mail?

Fake Email is open source, ships a public OpenAPI 3.1 spec, exposes an llms.txt and agent-skills index for AI agents, and the entire Rust backend is on GitHub for you to read or self-host.

Is Fake Email really free?

Yes. Every feature is free. There is no paid tier, no signup, no credit card, and no ads on the inbox page.

How long does a temporary email last?

Mailboxes are ephemeral and auto-expire. Treat each address as single-use.

Can I send email from a disposable address?

No. Fake Email is receive-only to prevent abuse and keep the service free.

Do you store, sell, or read my messages?

No accounts exist, so there is nothing tied to a person. Mailboxes and their messages are purged on expiry.

Is there an API I can call from my app or tests?

Yes. See /docs/api and /openapi.json. Endpoints include POST /api/temporary-address and GET /api/inbox/poll.

Will incoming email show attachments?

Yes. Attachments arrive alongside the message body while the mailbox is alive.

Is Fake Email anonymous?

No signup is required, so no personally identifying information is collected by the service.

Is disposable email legal?

Using a disposable email address for privacy is legal in most jurisdictions. Always follow each website's terms of service.

Why might a website block disposable email addresses?

Some platforms block known disposable domains to reduce trial abuse or duplicate-account fraud.

Can I receive verification codes (OTPs) here?

Yes. Sign-up verification codes, magic links, and confirmation emails are all received normally.

Can AI agents use Fake Email?

Yes. Fake Email publishes llms.txt, an OpenAPI spec, a /.well-known/api-catalog, and an Agent Skills index. Agents can discover and call the service without a human in the loop.

How does Fake Email compare to using a Gmail alias?

A Gmail alias still lands in your real inbox and still ties the signup to your identity. A disposable address from Fake Email cannot be linked back to you and disappears when you are done.

Notes

Blog

Disposable-email explainers, privacy notes, and engineering posts from the team building an open-source temp-mail service in Rust.

2026-05-25·Engineering
Deploying a Rust service with Nix, GitHub Actions, and SCP — the full guide
Nix flake with Crane for local reproducibility, plain cargo on Ubuntu in CI for the deploy binary, scp + ssh to ship, systemd to run. Every file, every gotcha.
Read post →
2026-05-25·Engineering
How disposable email works — a full technical walkthrough
From DNS MX records to Rust SMTP servers to real-time polling. The complete pipeline behind a disposable inbox, explained step by step.
Read post →

Deploying a Rust service with Nix, GitHub Actions, and SCP — the full guide

How disposable email works — a full technical walkthrough