How Temporary Email Works

A temporary email service is, mechanically, three things: a domain that accepts mail for any address, a program that reads that mail, and a web interface that shows it to the right visitor. Nothing about it is exotic — it is ordinary mail plumbing arranged for short-lived addresses.

1. The domain accepts mail for every address

When someone sends to x7k4m2q9p8@emailgenerator.pro, their mail server looks up the MX record for the domain and connects to whatever host it names. Our receiving domains point their MX records at a mail server configured with a catch-all mailbox: instead of rejecting unknown local parts, it accepts them all into a single mailbox.

This is why you never have to "create" the address first. It already works, because every address on the domain works.

2. A collector reads and parses the mail

A scheduled job connects to that catch-all mailbox, downloads new messages, and parses each one: headers, MIME structure, character encodings, the plain-text alternative, the HTML alternative, and any attachments. It then matches the recipient header against the list of currently-active inboxes.

If no active inbox matches — the address was never generated, or it has already expired — the message is discarded. That is the normal case for the vast majority of mail a catch-all domain receives.

3. HTML is sanitised before it is ever stored

Email HTML is untrusted input written by strangers. Before storage, scripts, frames, objects, embedded content, event handlers and javascript: URLs are stripped, and remote images are replaced with inert placeholders so tracking pixels never fire. The surviving markup is rendered inside a sandboxed frame in your browser, so even a sanitiser bug has nowhere to go.

4. The inbox updates by polling

Your browser asks the server for new messages every few seconds over a small JSON request. It feels live, but it is deliberately simple: polling survives shared hosting, flaky mobile networks and background tabs far better than a persistent socket, and it degrades gracefully instead of failing loudly.

5. Everything expires

Each inbox carries an expiry timestamp. A cleanup job runs continuously; when the timer ends, the address stops matching incoming mail, the stored messages and attachments are deleted, and the access token is invalidated. There is no archive to recover from.

What this architecture cannot do

It cannot send. A catch-all receiver is not an outbound mail service, and adding one would immediately attract abuse.
It cannot guarantee delivery. If a sender's provider blocks disposable domains, the message never reaches our MX at all.
It cannot hide you. The service sees the mail it processes; a disposable address is compartmentalisation, not anonymity.

Questions

Why do some emails take longer to arrive?

Delivery time is controlled by the sender. Large providers sometimes queue or greylist first-contact mail, which can add anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes.

Can I choose my own address?

Not in this version. Random local parts prevent people from guessing or squatting on addresses that others are using.