Privacy Policy
This policy explains what information emailvanish.com collects, why, and how long it is kept. EmailVanish is operated by Michael Goldsmith, a sole proprietor based in New Jersey, USA ("we", "us"). The short version: the free temporary email service does not ask who you are, keeps received messages for only about ten minutes, and never sells your data.
1. Information we collect
Server logs
Like almost every website, our web server records basic technical details of each request: IP address, date and time, the page requested, the referring page and your browser's user-agent string. We use these logs to keep the service running, investigate errors and abuse, and understand overall traffic. Logs are rotated and deleted automatically, generally within about five weeks.
Free temporary inboxes
No registration or personal information is needed to use a free address. Your browser stores a random identifier so that refreshing the page shows the same inbox. Messages sent to a free address are received by our inbound mail provider, cleaned (images, scripts and styling are removed), stored in a temporary in-memory database and deleted automatically, normally ten minutes after the last message arrives. We do not archive or back up these messages. Because free inboxes have no password, anyone who knows an address can read its messages while they exist; please do not use them for anything private.
EmailVanish Premium
If you subscribe to Premium we store: the email address you give at checkout (used to sign you in and for billing), your Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, the addresses you choose to keep, and messages received at those addresses (up to the most recent 500 per address, with images, scripts and styling removed). Payment card details are handled entirely by Stripe and never reach our servers. You can delete any kept address or message from your dashboard at any time, and everything belonging to a subscription is deleted automatically thirty days after it ends.
Contact form
If you use the contact form, the address and message you enter are sent to us by email so that we can reply. We keep that correspondence only as long as needed to deal with your request.
Support chat
Some pages include a support chat assistant. If you use it, what you type is processed to generate an answer, which may involve an AI model provider acting on our behalf. Please do not type sensitive personal information into the chat.
2. Cookies and similar technologies
- Our own cookies. The free service sets no cookies of its own. If you sign in to Premium, one strictly necessary cookie keeps you signed in. It is not used for tracking or advertising.
- Local storage. The random inbox identifier described above is kept in your browser's local storage, not sent anywhere except to fetch your own inbox.
- Advertising cookies. Our guide and information pages show ads served by Google (see section 3). Google and its partners may set or read cookies and similar identifiers on those pages.
3. Advertising
We use Google AdSense to show advertising on our guide and information pages. Ads are not placed alongside the messages in your inbox.
- Third-party vendors, including Google, use cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this website and other websites.
- Google's use of advertising cookies enables it and its partners to serve ads to you based on your visits to this site and/or other sites on the internet.
- You may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Google's Ads Settings. You can also opt out of some third-party vendors' use of cookies for personalized advertising at www.aboutads.info/choices.
- For more on how Google uses data from sites that use its services, see How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services.
If you visit from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you will be asked for your consent before personalized ads or advertising cookies are used, through a consent message provided by Google. You can change your choice at any time from the privacy link that message provides.
4. Affiliate product recommendations
Some pages show privacy and security products from AliExpress. The product images are loaded from AliExpress's servers. If you click a product, you go to AliExpress, which may set its own cookies to record the referral, and we may earn a commission if you buy. AliExpress's own privacy policy applies on its website.
5. Who else processes data
We do not sell, rent or trade personal information. We use a small number of service providers who process data only to run the service:
- an inbound email provider that receives mail for the emailvanish.com domain and passes it to our server;
- Stripe, for Premium payments;
- Google, for advertising as described above;
- our hosting and email infrastructure in the United States.
We may disclose information if required by law. In practice, because free inboxes are deleted within minutes and we do not know who uses them, there is usually nothing to disclose.
6. Your choices and rights
Depending on where you live (for example in the EU, the UK or California), you may have rights to access, correct or delete personal information we hold about you, and to object to certain processing. For the free service we generally hold nothing that identifies you. Premium subscribers can delete their data from the dashboard, or contact us for anything else. We do not sell personal information. You can limit personalized advertising using the links in section 3.
7. Children
The Service is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from them.
8. Security
We use encrypted connections (HTTPS), keep data in as few places as possible, and delete it as early as we can. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security.
9. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. When we do, we will change the date at the top of this page.
10. Contact
For privacy questions or requests, use our contact page. See also our terms of use.