What is a disposable email address?
A disposable email address is a throwaway inbox that works for minutes or hours, then disappears. Services such as Mailinator, 10 Minute Mail and Temp Mail hand them out for free, and new domains appear every day. People use them to grab a free trial, a discount code or a download without giving their real address.
We know more than 12,000 throwaway domains. New ones are harder: they are not on any list yet. We catch many of them anyway, because throwaway services share the same mail servers across all their domains.
Why fake signups cost you money
Every fake account burns something: free-trial credits, compute, support time, or a referral bonus paid to someone who referred themselves. Fake accounts also pollute your numbers, so you can't tell which marketing works, and your welcome emails bounce, which hurts your sender reputation.
A basic email validator only tells you if an address can receive mail. That misses the expensive cases: a bot with qwerty1234@yahoo.com, or one person who creates ten accounts with john+1@gmail.com, j.ohn+2@gmail.com and so on. Gmail delivers all of those to the same inbox.
How to read the result
- Human score runs from 0 to 100. Higher means more likely a real, unique person.
- Allow (60 to 100): looks like a real person. Let them in.
- Review (15 to 59): something is unusual. Ask for email verification or a CAPTCHA before you give free credits.
- Block (0 to 14): very likely fake, throwaway or undeliverable.
- Reasons list why, most important first. Green ones raise the score; red ones lower it.
An unusual-looking name alone can never cause a block, only a review. Real names from many languages look unusual, so we never block on the name alone. Privacy relays such as Apple Hide My Email count as real people.
If we spot a typo such as gmial.com, we suggest the right address so you keep the customer.