2 Minute Mail - Free Anonymous Temporary E-mail

Two minutes is tight, and sometimes too tight

Most confirmation mail arrives in under ten seconds, so two minutes is usually plenty. The problem is the cases where it isn't. Plenty of mail servers use greylisting: the first delivery attempt from an unfamiliar sender gets refused on purpose, and the sending server retries a few minutes later. Your message is not lost, it is queued. A two-minute window can close before the retry happens.

If nothing has arrived and the box is about to expire, open a longer one and sign up again rather than waiting. Re-registering costs you ten seconds. Watching an empty inbox costs you the code.

Where the short window is the point

Two minutes suits throwaway checks: confirming a download link works, reading a one-time code from a site you will never return to, testing your own sign-up form during development. The address disappears quickly, which is the behaviour you want when you are creating dozens of them in a row.

What it does not suit is anything with a human on the other end. Support replies, marketplace messages and password resets all arrive on their own schedule, and that schedule is rarely two minutes.

One habit worth keeping: copy the address before you leave this page. Every minute you spend hunting for it again is a minute off the clock.