Burner email addresses are a lot like the burner phones you see your favorite spies using on TV — private, temporary, and disposable.
But a burner email might be more useful to you than you think.
Continue reading to explore what burner emails are, why you might want to use them, and which alternatives are worth trying.
What is a burner email?
A burner email is a temporary email address you can use to receive messages without sharing your primary address. Also known as a disposable email address, a burner email often serves as a secondary account for unwanted or unimportant messages.
Burner emails can be used to forward messages to your primary inbox or as a standalone account. They’re helpful when signing up for online services, as they let you avoid giving up personal information to spammers or potential fraudsters.
Since it’s all too easy for an email to end up on annoying mailing lists or even the dark web, a burner email is also a good idea if you want to protect your online privacy.
Why should you use a burner email?
Generating a burner email address can offer many privacy benefits, helping you with the following:
Protecting personal information online
There’s a good chance your primary email account contains your real name and surname. Even if it doesn’t, you may have included it on social media profiles or other online accounts that display your name.
Burner email addresses allow you to manage messages via an account that doesn’t look like yours. Give yourself a unique address without any PII (Personally Identifiable Information) to boost your privacy online.
Minimizing your digital footprint
Your digital footprint grows bigger as you share more details online. Using one main email address for all your online accounts creates a clearer picture of you on the web, making it easier to do things like trace your emails.
Disposable email addresses make it much more difficult for companies or scammers to track all of your online activity.
Reducing spam and phishing links
The more you use your real email, the more likely you are to have it leaked or accidentally post it on an unsafe website. This may lead to you receiving more spam or phishing emails on your main account.
With a disposable email address, your chances of getting spam and phishing links sent to your main inbox are significantly smaller.
Limiting exposure to data breaches
Data breaches dump any information a website or service stores on you into the hands of hackers. This may include your name, registration email, and more. Very often, this is already enough information to trap you in some kind of attempt to defraud you.
Burner email addresses keep a lot of your PII off websites, so if a breach occurs, there’s a much lower chance of anything damaging actually getting out.
Enhancing control over personal data shared online
If you want to limit how much of your personal data makes it out onto the internet, sharing your primary email wherever you surf isn’t going to help.
When using a burner email, no PII is given out, so it’s easier for you to oversee what sensitive info is visible to others.
Providing an extra layer of privacy in online interactions
If you need to send one-off messages to people you don’t know, using your main email address strips you of any privacy you may want to keep.
A temporary email address, on the other hand, lets you privately communicate with others without oversharing. Once the interaction is finished, you can delete the account without worrying about losing access to important messages.
Using a temporary address is even a helpful step when trying to send emails anonymously.
Practical applications of burner emails
People aren’t just getting burner emails out of fear. These accounts are also handy for handling various online activities, like the following examples:
Signing up for free trials or services
Many websites often ask you to enter an email address to gain access to a free trial, an online service, and even an article. Companies typically do this so they can send you marketing offers later.
However, enjoying a single new service might not be worth a lifetime of spam — or the potential security risk of giving up your main inbox. If you don’t plan on using a service more than once, slap these websites with a burner email address to get the content you want without worrying about marketing emails.
Avoiding promotional emails while shopping online
Online stores and businesses want your email for practical reasons, like helping you track down past orders. However, email addresses also play a role in the company’s marketing efforts. Repeated email reminders are an effective — but usually annoying — way to build customer loyalty and get shoppers to buy more.
If you have a burner email, this flood of marketing emails can largely be absent from your shopping experience.
Registering temporary social media or forum accounts
Many platforms still limit their offerings to registered users. Nine times out of ten, that means you need an email address to join.
In cases when you don’t want to engage with the website long-term, a temporary email address is a smart choice.
Let’s say you want to sign up for a forum where you can get a particular question answered. With a burner email, you can keep your actual email address separate from your profile and post your question anonymously.
Testing apps or services without revealing your real email
User ratings in app stores should be taken with a grain of salt. To really see what an app or service is like, you should test it out yourself. The thing is, sharing your primary address for every little thing you want to test can make your email a bit too public.
That’s where a burner email comes in. Put in disposable addresses each time you want to test something out, and you’ll gain access without revealing anything sensitive.
Participating in surveys or polls anonymously
Have you ever won a prize for participating in an online survey? Me neither.
Still, it’s nice to express your opinions on various topics occasionally, and you shouldn’t have to compromise your online privacy by sharing your primary email.
Use a burner address anytime you want to fill out a poll to protect your identity while making your voice heard.
How to create burner emails
Creating a burner email or temporary address (or two) doesn’t require advanced technical knowledge. Here are some best practices that make managing disposable email addresses simple and efficient.
1. Use strong, unique passwords for each account
Having a temporary email address might not be that secure if you just repeat your main account’s password. If you use the same password across the internet, a single leak can compromise multiple accounts.
It’s much safer to create unique passwords for each account you have. Moreover, regularly change your passwords to protect your credentials further.
2. Routinely review and delete unneeded burner emails
Burner emails are often needed for just a short time, but your burner account will likely stay available online unless you take the steps to delete it.
Some temporary email address services automatically delete themselves after a set amount of time, but you’re typically responsible for keeping your online presence clean and tidy.
Delete unnecessary burner emails once they no longer serve any purpose. This is especially important for burner email addresses that merely forward emails to your main inbox. By closing these accounts, you’ll prevent your inbox from overflowing with messages you won’t need anymore.
3. Choose reputable burner email services for better security
Yes, people frequently turn to burner emails to limit their online exposure. However, many email services still have access to some of your sensitive data. If you choose the wrong one, you might do more harm than good.
Don’t put yourself at risk using just any old email service. Conduct background checks on any disposable email service you find online, so you can be more confident that whichever one you choose is trustworthy.
4. Keep a record of service-burner address pairs
Many internet users create different burner email addresses for different services in the name of privacy. While this makes sense, it can make things hard to remember.
Which email address do I need to log in to this particular service?
Always knowing the correct answer can be tricky. That’s why it’s important to log the email address used for each online service.
Your email is often your username, and if you forget the pairing, recovering access may be difficult. Also, if burner addresses are forwarding emails to your primary inbox, it’s essential to know where each of your messages is coming from to keep track of spam or potential scams.
Your records will, if nothing else, show you which particular service compromised your data in the event of a leak.
Surfshark’s Alternative ID: beyond burner emails
A burner email is helpful, but it ultimately offers limited security. If you really want to make yourself harder to identify online, use a tool like Surfshark’s Alternative ID.
Alternative ID lets you generate a new online name and email address to mask your contact information and avoid spam or data leaks from untrustworthy sites.
Specifically, Alternative ID includes the following:
- Alternative email: lets you create a unique email alias to keep your personal email private and secure. You can hide your primary email on public platforms and defend your main account from phishing and data leaks;
- Alternative persona: generates a new name, date of birth, and physical address for you to use online, so you appear as a totally different person when handling online sign-ups and forms.
Surfshark also offers alternative number, a paid add-on that helps you mask your main number from unwanted eyes with a completely new virtual phone number. You can use it to register for discounts and avoid threats like data sharing, identity theft, and robocalls.
Alternative ID is just one tool in Surfshark’s all-in-one cybersecurity suites. Depending on which plan you choose, you can also enjoy:
- Surfshark VPN (Virtual Private Network): encrypts your internet traffic and masks your IP (Internet Protocol) address to offer greater online privacy and security;
- Surfshark Antivirus: provides scheduled scans and real-time protection against malware, viruses, ransomware, and more to help your devices stay safe even when they’re offline;
- Surfshark Alert: sends you personal data leak alerts for your online accounts, credit cards, and IDs;
- Surfshark Search: brings you purely organic search results without ads or trackers;
- Incogni: removes your data from online brokers and people search sites to protect you from identity theft and lower your risk of spam and scams.
Key takeaway: choose Alternative ID over a burner email
You can never be too safe on the internet today, as even your email address can be a lucrative target for spammers, scammers, and marketing companies.
Protecting yourself with a burner email may help in some cases, but it’s best to take things a step further with Alternative ID. Available in all Surfshark bundles, Alternative ID gives you a whole new online persona, including a unique email address to keep your main account private.
Keep your primary email address private with Alternative ID
Available in every Surfshark bundle
Get SurfsharkFAQ
How do I get a burner mail?
To get a burner email account, create a new address from your preferred email provider or search online for services that provide disposable email addresses. Some specialized pages can make setting up temporary email addresses easier and faster, so this may be a better choice than using a regular email site.
What is a burner address?
A burner address is an email address tied to a disposable email account or a service that forwards emails to keep your real address private, receive fewer unwanted emails, or gain more protection from phishing emails.
Can burner emails be traced?
Burner emails aren’t easy to trace if you’re using a trustworthy service, but it’s still technically possible to find some sensitive information based on your email address. This is more likely if you mention personal details in your address or messages, select links sent to you via email, or don’t take other precautions against email tracing.
Is it good to have a burner email?
Yes, using a burner email is generally a good idea. A burner account can be used to set up accounts online or in situations where you don’t want to share your personal information.
However, it’s important to note that these accounts don’t guarantee 100% privacy, and some sites that create temporary email addresses aren’t reliable.
Are temp emails safe?
Temporary email addresses and burner emails are safe as long as a trustworthy company provides them. As the service is supposed to either forward emails to your main inbox or serve as a secondary email inbox, an unreliable provider may have access to your messages or private information.
How do I create a burner email without a phone number?
You typically don’t need a phone number to create a burner email. You just need to find an online service that specializes in burner emails.
Better yet, Surfshark subscribers can try Alternative ID, which creates an alternative email you can use similarly to a burner email.
What do people use burner emails for?
People often use burner emails to get more online privacy. Specifically, these accounts and tools like Alternative ID can be used to:
- Register for one-off online purchases;
- Register for surveys;
- Create throwaway accounts on social media;
- Register on apps they’re not sure of.
Is a burner email free?
While many burner email services are free, the most reliable ones are paid. Similar paid tools, like Surfshark’s Alternative ID, also give broader privacy protection than a simple burner email address.
