Temporary Email Frequently Asked Questions
General Questions
Why would I need such a thing?
Why should I use your service and not some other service/site/program/mambojumbo?
Is this service really secure?
What are the limitations of this service?
I have a suggestion/problem/feature-request/etc
How can I help/support you or your service?
General Answers
What is this all about?
This service offers you a temporary email address that you can use to receive email from people/sites/organizations to which you don't want to give your "real"/everyday/"personal" email address.
Why would I need such a thing?
This type of service is usually used for registering on sites which you don't want to have your "real" email address. Most of the sites offer additional functionality if you register or require you to register in order to use their services at all. If you're an "internet person" you might end up registering on several sites each day. But if you value your privacy or you hate spam or you just want to be on the safe side you would most probably not want to give your "real" email address. The problem is that all these sites require that you provide a valid email address and they check this by sending you an email with a link on which you must click. By using a temporary emailsensei email address you can see that email and click that link so your account will be activated on the site on which you have just registered.
Even if you trust the site you're registering on it is usually a good idea not to use an email address that you actually use every day because you will probably end up receiving all kinds of email that technically don't qualify as spam but which will probably not have much value to you: newsletters, promotional offers, updates, reminders etc.
While this is the typical use for this kind of service you might find useful in any other situation when you want to provide a valid email address without providing your "real" email address.
How do I use this service?
It's really easy. And it's even easier if you have Firefox.
If you don't use Firefox or don't want to use the emailsensei Firefox extension all you have to do is go to emailsensei.com home page and you will already have a randomly generated temporary email address that you can use. You just have to copy that email address and paste it wherever you need it. Then you click the 'View inbox' button on emailsensei.com home page and you get to see all messages received by this email address during the last 24 hours.
If you have the emailsensei Firefox extension installed you just right click on any text input field and in the 'emailsensei' submenu click 'Insert temporary email address'. You can always check the email for your last used temporary email address via right click anywhere on page - emailsensei - Inbox for last used temporary email
Why should I use your service and not some other service/site/program/mambojumbo?
I'm glad you asked this question :) There are quite a few reasons for which you should use our service and not anything else with a similar concept:
- Privacy - we don't know any of your real email addresses because you don't provide them to us for using this service
- Security - the minimum length imposed on email names makes it nearly impossible to guess an email address; the additional time limit of 24 hours makes it even harder for two email addresses to overlap
- It's really easy to use - and you have a Firefox extension for it too :)
- It's free
Is this service really secure?
Security is relative so there is no short answer for this question. But security is and always will be a major concern for us.
The main security issue you should notice is that anyone knowing the temporary email that you used will have access to your emails received during the last 24 hours just as you will. But this is not as bad as it sounds because it is nearly impossible to guess to guess a string that is at least 16 characters long. This really acts like a password and I doubt that your password even combined with your username gives a string longer than 16 characters. Brute force attacks are difficult to perform because they must be carried over the internet which is very much slower than running locally and on the other hand we take our own precautions - such an attack won't remain unnoticed. Even if the attacker would be successfull he has a 24 hour constraint - even if he guessed your temporary email address he won't see the email older than 24 hours.
There is obviously one thing you should notice in order to be on the "secure" side: you should not use the same temporary email address twice. That's why it's called 'temporary' in the first place. Failing to do so is a major security threat: the people/sites/organizations you have given the temporary email address to will have that temporary email address and that means they will have full access to your emails. This is not a problem if you have used this email address only for them (because they already know what they send you :) but it becomes a problem if you use the same address a second time - so just don't do it
If you are still concerned about brute force attacks you must remember that the length of the email address can go up to 255 characters and you can use any combination of characters that are allowed in an email address
What are the limitations of this service?
Current limitations are:
- minimum length of email name (name@emailsensei.com): 16 characters
- maximum length of the email address: 255 characters
- maximum visibility interval of received email: 24 hours
- there is no possibility to send emails with this service
- the only possibility of accessing the received email is via emailsensei.com web site - no forwarding, pop, imap etc.
- there is no support for any kind attachments - just simple text or html email
These limitations are subject to change at any time without prior notice. We also may impose some other limitations that are designed to prevent abuse of this service. We do not reveal these limitations in order to make them more efficient and also because they might change frequently. You must keep in mind that all these limitations are not made for regular users but to protect regular users from abuse. If your usage of our service is not abusive but you feel that you are limited in any way by our service please contact us and let us know about your problems. We'll surely work something out.
I have a suggestion/problem/feature-request/etc
Please write us an email to and let us know about it.
How can I contact you?
Just write us an email:
How can I help/support you or your service?
We're are surely glad you asked this question :) These services do come free but we worked to get it here for you. In order to be able to add new features, support our users or fix bugs we need your support. There are a number of ways in which you can help us very easily:
- Use our services
- Insert a note of any kind in your page that will let your visitors know that you use our services. We hope we'll be able to provide some logos soon
- Give us feedback of any kind
- Last but certainly not least you can some money from time to time. We are humans after all so we eat and drink. ANY contribution regardless how big or small will be greatly appreciated and we really mean that.