What is a burner email?
A burner email or disposable email address is an email alias that forwards all incoming emails to your personal inbox. It does not have an expiration date and works just like a real email address, except it cannot be traced back to you by the sender.
What is a temporary mailbox?
A temporary mailbox is a service that allows you to receive email in an anonymous inbox and gets self-destructed after a certain time, most common 10 minutes. Also referred to as throwaway email address, temporary email address, fake email or trash email.
What are burner emails used for?
Burner emails are designed to be used as unique, anonymous email addresses for every service you sign up to. If a burner email gets compromised you can easily cancel or "dispose" of it without losing the email from other services. They are used as a layer of protection over your personal inbox.
What are temporary mailboxes used for?
Temporary mailboxes are used for receiving trash emails, quick confirmation code emails and free trials. Most often people use them for subscribing to services that they don't want emails from and for sending anonymous emails that can't be traced back to them.
What are the main differences between them?
Burner emails forward to an existing inbox and have a "real" recipient which is your personal inbox, while temporary mailboxes do not have a "real" recipient since the address gets self-destructed.
Burner emails can be used only for forwarding emails, while temporary mailboxes can be used for receiving and sending emails.
Every burner email address is attached to a specific logged in user and is traceable by an admin while temporary mailboxes are most often public and can be accessed through a url.
Temporary mailboxes are associated with hackers and fraud since the mailbox self-destructs and cannot be traced back to the user. Burner emails cannot be used for fraud since you can report an abuse and the service can block the abusive users if evidence is given.
What should you use burner emails for?
Burner emails are usually used for signing up to newsletters, forums, shopping online, etc. You should use a burner email for every service that you don't trust and that might spam you later and to protect yourself against data breaches.
What should you use temporary mailboxes for?
Temporary mailboxes are usually used to pass the registration and email confirmation wall that most services have. You should use temporary mailboxes for services you don't want to hear from and for sending anonymous emails.
