How to make a throwaway email

The short version of how to make a throwaway email: open a temporary inbox service, copy the address it hands you, paste it into the signup form, and read the message when it lands. On InboxDome that is one click and no account, and the inbox deletes itself 24 hours later. Below is that route in full, the two alternatives worth knowing, and the signups where a throwaway address will cost you more than it saves.

Route one: a temporary inbox, in about thirty seconds

1. Open the InboxDome home page. An address is already waiting. There is nothing to fill in.
2. Click the address bar to copy it. The button flips to “Copied”.
3. Paste it into whatever form you are signing up to.
4. Watch the inbox. Mail appears live as it arrives, so there is no refresh button to hunt for.
5. Copy your code or follow your link, then hit “Delete inbox” when you are finished.

No password, no app, no confirmation step before you can use it. There is also a QR code button, so you can open the same inbox on your phone. Read the warning on that dialog first: the QR contains the private link to the inbox, and anyone who scans it can read your mail. Treat that link like a password, because that is what it is.

Choose the address, or let it choose for you

By default you get a random address, which is what you want for a one-off signup: the less it says about you, the better. If you would rather it be readable, the composer lets you type your own name before the @ and pick which domain to use from the dropdown.

Domain choice matters more than it looks. Some signup forms maintain blocklists of known disposable domains, so an address that gets rejected on one domain often sails through on another. “New address” mints a fresh one, and “History” brings back the addresses this browser has already made, in case you closed the tab on one you still need. If you want to see how the providers differ on domains, retention and blocklists, we ranked the best disposable email services on exactly that.

Make it last longer, or kill it early

Every inbox shows a countdown. The default life is 24 hours, and the “+1h” and “+24h” buttons push that out while you are still using it, up to a hard maximum of seven days. Attachments live exactly as long as the message they arrived with.

“Delete inbox” is not cosmetic. The address stays dead afterwards, so mail sent to it later never reaches anyone, and a cleanup job sweeps expired data every 15 minutes. The full detail, including how long the security logs live, is on how long InboxDome keeps mail.

The plus-sign trick, when you want the mail to still reach you

If you use Gmail you can put a tag after a plus sign and the mail still arrives: yourname+shop@gmail.com lands in yourname@gmail.com. Google documents this in its own Workspace Learning Center, and the underlying mechanism, subaddressing, is a standard described in RFC 5233. Set a filter on the tag and each shop gets its own label.

It has two real strengths: you keep the mail forever, and if +shop starts receiving spam you know exactly who sold or leaked your address. It also has three real weaknesses. It is still your actual address, so a determined sender just deletes the tag. Some forms reject the plus sign outright. And it does nothing once the site is breached: Have I Been Pwned currently lists over 1,000 breached websites and roughly 17.8 billion exposed addresses, and none of those dumps care what came after your plus sign.

Forwarding masks, when you need to reply

The third option is a masking service such as Mozilla’s Firefox Relay. It gives you a random address that forwards to your real inbox, and it lets you reply through the mask without revealing where you actually are. Relay needs an account and has free and paid tiers, so check their pricing page for what each one includes.

That is genuinely the right tool for a job where InboxDome is the wrong one. An InboxDome address is receive-only: you cannot reply from it. That is deliberate, and it is the reason the service cannot be used to send spam or to impersonate anyone, but it does mean a two-way conversation is out. The inbox also goes away by design. If you want to keep talking to whoever you signed up with, use a mask or your real address. Masks are only one of the options worth using instead of temp mail when the inbox has to outlive the signup.

When a throwaway email is the wrong idea

Knowing how to make a throwaway email is the easy half. Knowing where not to use one is the half that saves you. Do not use one for anything you might need to recover later. That means banking, tax, government, work accounts, health portals and your domain registrar. If the inbox is gone, the password-reset link has nowhere to land and the account is gone with it. The same goes for order receipts, warranties, and any service you will still be using in a month. Some sites also forbid disposable addresses in their terms, which is their call to make and worth respecting.

Where a throwaway address earns its keep is the opposite case: a whitepaper you have to trade an email for, a trial you know you will not renew, a forum you will read once, a hotel WiFi portal, or a coupon code. For the wider question of what your address gives away in the first place, see how InboxDome protects an inbox and the rest of the email privacy writing.

Picking between the three

There are three honest answers to how to make a throwaway email, and they are not interchangeable. Use a temporary inbox when you need to receive one message and then never hear from that sender again. Use plus addressing when you want the mail permanently and mostly want to know who leaked you. Use a forwarding mask when you need the mail permanently and might have to reply.

Most people need all three at different moments, and the only expensive mistake is using the first one where you needed the third.