How Long a Mailbox Lasts
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Most services are vague about this. Here are the actual rules, why each one is set where it is, and what to do if you need longer.
The rules
Without an account, you have one address. It lives while you use it and is deleted after twenty four hours with no activity. Opening the page, reading a message or receiving one all count as activity and start the clock again.
Asking for a new address deletes the old one immediately, along with every message it held. This is instant and cannot be undone.
With an account, you may keep up to ten addresses at once. They and their messages are deleted seven days after your last sign in. No individual message survives longer than thirty days, even if you sign in daily.
Why these numbers
Twenty four hours for guests covers the realistic case. Somebody signs up for something, gets a code, and is finished within minutes. A smaller number would break the one common exception, which is coming back the next morning for a message that arrived overnight. A larger number would mean holding mail nobody will ever open.
Immediate deletion on replacement exists because that is what the button means. If you ask for a new address, you are finished with the old one. Keeping it alive quietly would be storing mail you believe is already gone.
Seven days from last sign in for accounts ties the lifetime to actual use. An account visited weekly keeps its addresses indefinitely. One abandoned in March is gone by the end of the month, without us having to guess.
Thirty days maximum for any message stops an active account becoming an archive. Someone who signs in every day would otherwise accumulate mail forever, which is precisely the situation we are avoiding.
Why so short
Because storage is a liability, not a feature.
Every message kept is a message that can leak. Services that hold years of other people's mail eventually explain how it escaped, and no explanation makes their users whole. The safest data is the data that no longer exists.
There is also a practical reason. The service we replaced held years of accumulated mail and attachments, none of it ever read again, all of it costing money and slowing everything down. Deleting aggressively keeps the service fast and free.
Keeping an address longer
Sign in periodically. For an account, any sign in resets the seven day clock on every address you own.
Do not press for a new address. The commonest reason people lose a mailbox is pressing the button while waiting for a message.
Move to a permanent address instead. If you find yourself needing a temporary address to survive for weeks, you do not need a temporary address. You need an alias, which lasts until you switch it off.
What deletion actually means
It is removal, not archiving. The mailbox row, its messages and any stored attachments are deleted together. Cleanup runs continuously in the background, so an expired mailbox typically disappears within minutes of its time being up.
We cannot restore a deleted mailbox. Not for you, not for anybody, no matter how the request is worded. There is no backup containing it, because a backup containing it would defeat the entire arrangement.