Frequently asked questions
Everything worth knowing about temporary email in general, and about how 9inbox handles it in particular. If something is missing, the abuse and support addresses in the footer are read by people.
Getting started
A temporary email address is a working inbox created on demand and deleted automatically after a set period. It receives mail like any other address, but it is not registered to a person and needs no password. People use one when a website demands an email address before showing them anything, and they do not want that address in their real inbox permanently.
You already have one. An address is generated for you as the home page loads, and it is shown at the top of the page with a Copy button next to it. There is nothing to click first and no form to fill in. If you would prefer a different domain, open the domain list and pick one — a new address is issued on it immediately.
No. 9inbox runs entirely in the browser and needs no extension, no app and no configuration. If you want the address on your phone, scan the QR code next to it rather than retyping the address by hand.
Yes, for free and without an account — tap “Choose a name” and type the name you want. If it is already in use you will be asked to pick another. Names that expired recently stay locked for 30 days, so nobody can grab your old address and receive the password-reset emails still being sent to it. Premium domains are reserved for paid plans.
Limits and lifetime
A guest address lives for 10 minutes and can be extended with one click for as long as the tab is open. A free account raises this to 24 hours. On Pro and Business, addresses do not expire at all. The remaining time is always displayed next to the address, and turns amber in the last two minutes.
One hour on the guest tier, three days on a free account, ninety days on Pro and one year on Business. Messages are deleted by a scheduled job when their retention window closes, along with any attachments. Deletion is real: expired data is removed rather than archived somewhere colder.
No. 9inbox receives mail only and has no send capability at all. This is deliberate. A disposable service that could send mail would be used to send spam almost immediately, its mail servers would end up on blocklists, and incoming mail would then stop being delivered. Receive-only is what keeps delivery working.
No. Once the cleanup job has run, the message and its attachments are gone from both the database and the object store. If you need something to outlive its window, download it before the countdown finishes or move to a plan with longer retention.
One on the guest tier, five on a free account, fifty on Pro and five hundred on Business. The limit counts addresses that currently exist, so deleting an address you have finished with frees a slot immediately.
Safety and privacy
It is safe for the purpose it exists for and unsafe for anything else. A disposable inbox has no password, so anyone who knows the address can read what arrives in it. That is acceptable for a newsletter or a one-off download and unacceptable for banking, payment wallets, government services or work accounts. For anything you would be upset to lose, use a real mailbox with a password and two-factor authentication.
No. Your inbox is tied to the browser that created it (or to your account, if you signed in). Knowing the address is enough to send mail to it, not to read it. The real risks are different: lose your browser data and you lose the inbox, and a name that has expired can eventually be claimed by someone else. That is why a temporary address should never protect anything important.
For guest sessions: the addresses you created, the messages sent to them, and a signed session token that identifies the browser rather than the person. No name, no password, no real email address. Registered accounts additionally store the email and password hash you signed up with. Everything tied to an expired address is deleted with it. The privacy policy sets out the full list and how to request deletion.
Yes, by default. Message bodies are sanitised on the server, and remote images are rewritten to load through a proxy that only fetches them when you press show images. This blocks tracking pixels — which would otherwise tell the sender exactly when you opened the message — and prevents your IP address from being revealed to the sender's server.
An attachment in a temporary inbox is exactly as trustworthy as an attachment anywhere else, which is to say: not automatically. Attachments are scanned before they are made available, but scanning is not a guarantee. Apply the same judgement you would in your normal mailbox, and be more suspicious rather than less, since you did not choose who sends mail here.
Blocked addresses and deliverability
Sites check the domain of a sign-up address against public lists of known disposable-email providers, and refuse anything that matches. It is the domain being rejected, not you or the address. This has become more common as those lists have grown, and it is why a service with several domains is more useful than one with a single well-known domain.
Switch domains and try again. Open the domain list, pick a different one, and a new address is issued immediately — in most cases the second attempt is accepted. Premium domains are deliberately kept off public blocklists and are rejected far less often, which is a large part of what the paid plans are for.
Give it a moment first: mail is pushed to the page as it arrives, but the sending service may queue it for a minute or two, and some senders deliberately delay verification mail. If several minutes pass with nothing, the most likely explanation is that the sender rejected the address at signup without saying so. Try a different domain. Check also that the address has not expired, since mail to an expired address is refused rather than held.
Yes, on the Business plan. You point the MX record of a domain you own at 9inbox and verify ownership with a TXT record. Every address under that domain then delivers into your account as a catch-all. Because the domain is yours and is not on any disposable-domain list, addresses on it are not rejected as disposable.
Your address is already waiting
Nothing to install, nothing to fill in. Scroll back up, press Copy, and paste it wherever you were being asked for an email.