Disposable email address
A temporary address used briefly and then abandoned, often from a public inbox service that needs no signup, typically to get past a form without sharing a real address.
What it means
Mailinator, a well-known example, describes a temporary email as a disposable address you use for a short time and then abandon, and says every address on its public domain already has a live inbox that anyone can read without an account.
For senders such addresses add nothing: the person never intended to receive your mail, the public inbox may be read by anyone, and the address stops being read almost at once. Verification services flag known disposable domains so forms can reject them or ask for another address.
Forwarding services such as Apple's Hide My Email are different: they generate unique, random addresses that forward to a real personal account.
Related terms
On this site
Sources
What this definition rests on. The wording is ours; the facts are theirs.
- Mailinator: Temporary emailmailinator.com
- Apple Support: Use Mail Privacy Protection on iPhonesupport.apple.com
All 432 terms in the glossaryThe wiki: blocklists and bounce codes