Disposable Email Detection

Disposable emails (also called temporary or throwaway emails) are addresses from services that provide short-term inboxes. People use them to sign up for things they don’t want in their real inbox—which usually means they’re not your ideal customers.

What are disposable emails?

Disposable email services like Mailinator, Guerrilla Mail, and 10MinuteMail give users instant, temporary email addresses. These addresses:

Often expire within minutes or hours
Are used to bypass email verification
Rarely convert to paying customers
Clutter your database with fake leads

Examples of disposable domains:

mailinator.com
guerrillamail.com
10minutemail.com
tempmail.com
throwaway.email

TrueMail maintains a database of 15,000+ known disposable email domains and updates it regularly.

How TrueMail detects them

During validation, TrueMail checks if the email’s domain matches our disposable domain database. If it does, you can choose to:

Block automatically: Mark as “bad” during validation
Flag for review: Include in results but highlight the issue
Allow through: Treat like any other email

Blocking disposable emails

During bulk validation

When uploading a list, check the “Block disposable emails” option:

Any email from a known disposable domain will be marked as “bad” with the reason disposable_domain.

Via API

The API automatically checks for disposable emails. The response will indicate when one is detected:

{
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "status": "bad",
  "reason": "disposable_domain",
  "credits_used": 1
}

Why block disposable emails?

For marketers

Higher engagement rates: Real email users are more likely to open and click
Cleaner metrics: Don’t skew your open rates with dead addresses
Better ROI: Don’t waste sends on addresses that will expire

For site owners

Reduce spam signups: Discourage people creating throwaway accounts
Improve lead quality: Focus on users who share real contact info
Prevent abuse: Stop bad actors from creating multiple accounts

For developers

Cleaner databases: Don’t store contacts that will never be used
Better user verification: Ensure signups are from real addresses
Reduce support burden: Fewer “I can’t access my account” requests

Free Disposable Email Checker Tool

Not sure if an email domain is disposable? Use our free public tool:

Disposable Email Checker →

Just enter an email address and we’ll tell you instantly if it’s from a known disposable service. No account required.

Limitations

While our disposable email database is comprehensive, new services appear regularly. We update our list frequently, but some brand-new disposable services might not be detected immediately.

For the highest accuracy:

Combine disposable detection with SMTP validation
Set up domain filters for any disposable domains you encounter
Check back periodically as we update our database

Handling edge cases

Legitimate temporary emails

Some businesses use legitimate services that might be flagged. If you find a valid domain being marked as disposable, you can:

Add it to your domain filter as “allowed” (coming soon)
Contact us to review the domain classification

Private email domains

Small business domains or personal email servers are not flagged as disposable. We only flag known temporary email services.

Domain filters - Manually block specific domains
Validation types - Understand MX vs SMTP checks
Understanding results - Learn what each status means