Blog

Short, practical reads about temporary email, privacy and how mail actually gets delivered.

• From send button to inbox: the ten-second tripWhat happens between a website pressing send and a message showing up in your temporary inbox, and where the delays hide.
• The code never came: six reasons and what to tryA missing verification email usually has a boring explanation. Here is how to work out which one you are dealing with.
• A public inbox has no lock: what never to send to itAnyone who types the same name can read the same mail. That makes temporary inboxes great for some jobs and terrible for others.
• Plus signs and dots: free aliases hiding in your own addressMany mail providers let you create endless variations of your real address. When that beats a temporary inbox, and when it does not.
• Why images stay off until you clickA single invisible image can tell a sender you opened their email, when and roughly where. That is why our reader blocks remote images by default.
• Seven days, fifty messages: how long mail stays here Site noteThe exact rules for how long MailPingBack keeps email, what is removed first, and what is never stored at all.
• Reading an email header like a postmarkThe From line can say anything. The lines underneath tell you where a message really came from and whether it passed basic checks.
• “Please use a different email”: why some sites refuse addressesSign-up forms reject addresses for a few different reasons. Some are simple format rules, others are deliberate choices worth respecting.