What is Mailinator?

Mailinator is a different kind of email service. The biggest difference is that you don’t need to sign up. Any email name you can think of already exists @mailinator.com and you can use any of them. Want [email protected]? You got it. Want PrettyMothra? ScaryGavyn? No problem. Those and any other mailboxes you think of @mailinator.com are created when email arrives! Really.

How is Mailinator different than some other web email, like Yahoo or Hotmail?

Mailinator is fundamentally quite different from other services. Other services let you “own” email addresses. Not here – at Mailinator all email addresses are owned by everyone. All email is public. Also, email services like Gmail or Yahoo allow you to actually send email – Mailinator is “receive-only”.
You cannot send email from Mailinator.
Got an email from Mailinator? No you didn’t – someone forged the return address. Send us the headers of any email that appears to be from Mailinator and we can show you the computer it actually came from. ([email protected])
After several hours, all email is auto-deleted. There is no real security here.

The upside is that Mailinator does not require sign-up. Send email to a name, and the account is created automagically.

In a nutshell, other services provide more functionality but require a sign-up (which takes time, even if you falsify all the information anyway). Mailinator provides less, but requires no sign-up.

Do I want this?

Are you Kidding? YOU SURE DO !
In our internet world, you often need an email address NOW. And you probably already have an email address – and that probably works great for most emailing. But every now and then you need a quick email address for just a single email. After that you don’t care what happens to it. Given that such an email address is ready in an instant – really, it was ready even before you knew you needed it – you can avoid giving out your real email address. Instead, make up any address @mailinator.com on the spot and go check it later.