Frequently asked questions

For the things it is designed for: verification codes, one-off signups, and avoiding spam. It is not a substitute for your real email inbox if you care about long-term access, password recovery, financial statements, or anything else where losing the message would be a problem.

Sixty minutes from the moment you generate the address, plus one optional 60-minute extension if you click "+60m" before the timer runs out. After expiry, the inbox stops accepting new mail, and within ten minutes the existing messages and attachments are hard-deleted from our database and storage.

No. We never read message bodies, never train any model on your mail, and never share it with third parties. Inbound HTML is sanitised (scripts and trackers stripped, links neutered) and stored only as long as the inbox is active.

No. VanishMail is receive-only. There is no SMTP relay, no "reply" button, and no outbound capability. If you need to send, use your real email provider.

Yes. Type a prefix into the box on the home page (3-20 chars, letters, digits, dashes) and we will generate prefix-xxxx@vshm.app. The address always gets a random 4-char suffix so collisions are impossible.

@vshm.app accepts mail for any local part, so we do not need to pre-register specific addresses. You create a random or custom prefix on demand; the catch-all routes the message to your inbox. This is why every VanishMail address looks like something-random@vshm.app rather than a fixed mailbox you could not choose.

No. Each inbox creates a unique random local part; the address is one-shot and never reused.

Yes. Attachments are accepted up to 25 MB per message (with a 5 MB per-file cap). They are scanned with ClamAV on the way in, stored on our server under a SHA-256-named directory for the lifetime of the inbox, and served only to the visitor with the matching token.

Like every web server, we keep a plain access log for seven days for abuse and debugging. The log contains the IP and user agent of every request. We do not use third-party analytics, advertising trackers, or session-replay tools on the public site.

Yes. The 60-minute ephemeral inbox is free. We do not currently offer paid tiers; the project is run as a small operation by WhitePeak Creative. If you find it useful, the about page lists the sponsorship and feedback channels.