A burner email is an address you use once and destroy, the same way you would use a burner phone: it does the job in front of you, and it cannot be traced back to the rest of your life. This one is ready the moment you open the page, and the Delete inbox button burns it the second you are done.
Free Wi-Fi portals, PDF downloads behind a form, trial accounts you already know you will abandon, marketplace listings, conference badge scans — every one of these is a transaction where the other party wants an address more than you want to give one.
Handing over a burner ends the relationship on your terms. There is no unsubscribe flow to fight and no way for a later data sale to reach you, because the address stops existing when the timer runs out.
You do not have to wait for the clock. Delete inbox removes the address and everything in it immediately, and hands you a fresh one. If you want to keep an inbox around longer than the default hour instead, Reset timer restarts the countdown.
A burner address hides your real mailbox, not you. It does not mask your IP address, it will not help if you type your real name into the form, and it is not encrypted storage — anyone who knows the address can read the inbox while it exists.
For a genuinely sensitive account, you want a real mailbox with a strong password and two-factor authentication. Burners are for the throwaway half of your online life, which is most of it.
An alias forwards into your real mailbox and lives as long as you keep it. A burner has no forwarding and no owner — when it expires the mail is deleted rather than delivered somewhere else.
Anyone who knows the exact address can, while it exists. Random addresses are long enough not to be guessable, but do not treat any inbox here as private.
Press Delete inbox. The address, its messages and its attachments are removed immediately and a new address is issued.