About EmailVanish
EmailVanish is a free temporary email service. Open the home page and you get a working email address instantly, with no sign-up, that receives mail for ten minutes and then forgets everything. It exists so you can use the web without handing your real address to every site that asks for one.
Who runs it
EmailVanish is built and operated by Michael Goldsmith, an independent developer in New Jersey, USA, as a sole proprietorship. The service runs on servers he manages himself rather than on a large platform, and he writes the guides on this site. If you have a question, a problem or a report, the contact page reaches him directly.
Why it exists
Almost every website wants an email address, even when you only want to read one article or download one file. Each of those sign-ups adds your real address to another marketing list and another database that may one day leak. A temporary address breaks that pattern: the site gets an address that works long enough to confirm the sign-up, and your real inbox never enters their system.
How it works
- The home page gives you a random address such as
3f9a0c1e@emailvanish.com. No account, name or password is involved. - Mail sent to that address is received, cleaned of images, scripts and tracking pixels, and shown on the page within about fifteen seconds.
- Messages are deleted automatically ten minutes after the last one arrives. We keep no archive.
The full technical walk-through is in How a Temporary Email Address Actually Works.
What we believe in
- Keep as little as possible. Data we do not hold cannot be leaked, sold or demanded. See the privacy policy for exactly what is logged.
- Receive-only, on purpose. EmailVanish cannot send mail, so it cannot be used to spam or harass anyone.
- Be honest about the limits. A temporary inbox has no password and disappears quickly. It is the wrong tool for banking, work or any account you want to keep, and our guides say so plainly.
- No abuse. Temporary email is for privacy, not for fraud, ban evasion or harassment. Our acceptable use policy spells out what is not allowed.
How EmailVanish pays for itself
The free service costs money to run: servers, bandwidth and the mail provider that receives messages for the domain. It is funded in three ways:
- EmailVanish Premium, an optional $1.99 per month subscription that keeps chosen addresses receiving mail for as long as you subscribe.
- Advertising on our guide and information pages, served by Google. Ads are never placed next to the messages in your inbox.
- Affiliate product recommendations. Some pages show privacy and security products from AliExpress. If you buy through one of those links we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you.
Learn more
Our guides cover how email works, how to spot phishing, what to do after a data breach, and how temporary addresses compare with aliases. We also have two short history articles on computer messaging before email and the world's first email.