No-Log Temporary Email: What “Zero Logs” Should Actually Mean
Plenty of services advertise “no logs.” Far fewer are built so that logging you isn’t possible in the first place. The difference matters: a promise can be broken, quietly changed, or compelled by a court. An architecture that never holds the data has nothing to hand over.
What most temp-mail still keeps
- Access logs tying your IP address to the inbox you opened.
- Readable mail sitting in a database or backup on the server.
- Accounts, sessions, and analytics that outlive the inbox.
Any one of these turns “anonymous” email into a record that can be searched, sold, or subpoenaed later.
What zero-log should mean
Zero-log: no accounts, no access logs, no archives. Requests aren’t written down, so there is no history to request.
Zero-access: mail is sealed the instant it arrives, to an encryption key derived from a viewing key that only your browser holds. The server stores ciphertext and a hash — never readable mail. Decryption happens in your browser.
Ephemeral: inboxes and every message in them are purged on expiry, and you can destroy an inbox yourself at any time. What isn’t stored can’t be produced.
An honest limit
No service that receives ordinary email can claim true end-to-end encryption: the sender’s provider transmits the message like any other email, so it exists in server memory for the instant it takes to seal it. It is never stored readable and never readable again by anyone but you. Naming that line exactly is part of what “no-log” should mean — a service that over-claims on encryption is one to distrust on logging too.