Questions
Temporary email, answered
Everything below describes what this service actually does. Where the honest answer is inconvenient — who can read your mail, what happens when you clear your cookies — it is here rather than buried.
What is a temporary email address?
A temporary email address is a disposable inbox you use in place of your real one — for a signup, a download link, or a verification code — and then abandon. Geek Mails gives you one instantly, with no account and no password.
The point is separation. Your real address is tied to your name, your contacts, and often your account recovery; a temporary one is tied to nothing, so handing it to a site you do not yet trust costs you nothing if that site turns out to sell its list.
Will websites accept a Geek Mails address?
Usually, yes — because the address you are given is a real Gmail address, not an address at a disposable-mail domain. Signup forms that reject throwaway providers are matching against domain blocklists, and gmail.com is not on them.
Most temporary-mail services run their own domains, which get added to public disposable-address blocklists within days. Geek Mails works differently: every address is a variation of a Gmail mailbox the operator owns, built from Gmail's own handling of dots and +tags. See how it works for the mechanism.
It is not a guarantee. A site is free to reject any address for any reason, and some specifically refuse addresses containing a + tag.
How long does my temporary address last?
Your address is tied to a cookie in this browser that lasts one year. There is no countdown and no automatic expiry on the address or its mail — it stays available until you clear the cookie or an operator removes it.
That makes it longer-lived than a ten-minute mailbox, which matters when a confirmation email arrives a day late. It also means the mail does not clean itself up, so treat anything you receive as something that persists. Read the privacy policy for what is stored and for how long.
Can I receive verification codes and confirmation links?
Yes. That is the main thing the service is for — signup confirmations, one-time codes, download links, and newsletters all arrive normally, usually within seconds.
New mail appears in your inbox on this page automatically, and you can press Refresh if you are impatient. Remote images are blocked until you choose to load them, so a sender cannot confirm you opened the message with a tracking pixel.
Can I send or reply to email?
No. Geek Mails is receive-only. There is no way to send, reply to, or forward mail from an address issued here, and no plan to add one.
This is a deliberate limit rather than a missing feature: an anonymous free service that can send mail is a spam cannon, and it would be blocklisted within a week. If you need to reply to someone, use a real mailbox.
Is Geek Mails free?
Yes, completely. There is no payment, no paid tier, no advertising, and nothing to sign up for.
Do I need an account?
No. There is no registration, no password, and no email address to confirm. Opening the page and pressing the button is the whole process.
Your claim on your inbox is a signed cookie called gm_inbox. It is marked httpOnly, so scripts on the page cannot read it, and it contains an internal reference to your address and nothing else — no name, no identifier, nothing about you.
Who can read the mail sent to my temporary address?
You can, and so can the people who operate Geek Mails. Messages are stored in readable form, and there is an administrative console that can list and read every message the system has received, including yours.
We say this plainly because a temporary-mail service that implies otherwise is misleading you. Your mail is not anonymous, not encrypted in a way that hides it from us, and passes through Google's servers on the way here.
Treat anything you receive as readable by a stranger. Use it for sign-up confirmations and one-off verifications — never for banking, identity, medical, or account-recovery mail. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is stored.
Can I get an old address back after clearing my cookies?
No. The cookie is the only thing linking you to your address, so once it is gone the address and its mail cannot be returned to you — not by support, not by anyone.
This is the direct cost of a service that holds no identifying information about you. There is nothing to verify a claim against, which protects you from everyone else claiming your inbox and equally prevents you from reclaiming it.
When should I not use a temporary email address?
Never use one for anything you would mind losing or having read: banking, payments, government identity, tax, medical, insurance, or employment mail. Never use one as a recovery address or a second factor for an account you care about.
A temporary address is disposable by design, which means the account behind it is disposable too. If losing access would matter to you, use a real mailbox. The terms spell this out.