Email architecture & privacy glossary

A service that issues stable, long-lived email addresses that forward to your primary inbox. Each alias can be disabled independently if it begins receiving unwanted mail. Examples include SimpleLogin, Addy.io, and Apple Hide My Email. Unlike a disposable inbox, an alias is designed for long-term accounts. See our disposable vs. alias guide for a detailed comparison.

An email routing rule where a mail server accepts messages sent to any local part at a domain (*@yourdomain.tld). tenmin.app pairs an inbound catch-all rule with an active lease check so only currently open 10-minute inboxes accept mail.

An email address with an automatic, short expiration window. After the TTL elapses (typically minutes to hours), the address stops accepting mail and all received messages are purged. Also referred to as temporary mail, throwaway email, or 10-minute mail.

An email authentication standard (RFC 6376) where the sending mail server cryptographically signs outgoing messages with a private key, and receiving servers verify the signature against a public key published in DNS TXT records. See our SPF, DKIM, and DMARC staging test guide.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (RFC 7489). A DNS policy layered on top of SPF and DKIM that instructs receivers how to handle messages (none, quarantine, or reject) that fail identifier alignment. See our guide to testing SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

Terminating inbound SMTP connections at distributed edge gateways and piping raw RFC 5322 byte streams directly into stateless ingestion handlers rather than queuing messages onto traditional disk-backed mail servers. See our architecture walkthrough.

Time-to-live: the duration after which stored data expires and is purged. tenmin.app enforces a 600-second TTL on every inbox record so messages auto-delete after ten minutes. See how tenmin.app works under the hood.

The opening commands of an SMTP session where the connecting mail server announces its hostname to the receiving server. Receivers check the HELO/EHLO hostname alongside reverse DNS and SPF records when scoring sender reputation.

Low-latency storage used to hold active inbox payloads keyed by their six-character hexadecimal ID until their 600-second lease TTL expires. See migrating ephemeral TTL state from KV caches to serverless SQLite.

A gated PDF, whitepaper, or template offered in exchange for an email address on a signup form. Because the entire document link is delivered in the first welcome email, lead magnets are a common use case for a 10-minute disposable inbox.

The portion of an email address before the @ symbol. In a1b2c3@tenmin.app, the local part is a1b2c3. RFC 5321 caps the local part at 64 characters.

The specification (RFC 2045 to 2049) for formatting multipart email bodies, character encodings, plain text alongside HTML, and file attachments. See how RFC 5322 MIME parsing works in serverless edge environments.

A DNS Mail Exchange record that specifies which mail servers accept incoming SMTP traffic for a domain and in what priority order.

Appending a tag to the local part of an email address using a plus sign, such as yourname+staging@gmail.com. Most mail providers deliver the message to yourname@gmail.com while preserving the tag for inbox filtering. Useful for organization, though it still exposes your underlying address.

An email service architecture that accepts inbound SMTP deliveries but provides no outbound MSA/SMTP sending capability. tenmin.app is receive-only by design to prevent outbound spam abuse.

HTML markup that has had executable tags (<script>, <style>, <iframe>), inline event handlers, and javascript: URIs removed before rendering inside a sandboxed <iframe sandbox="">. See preventing XSS when rendering untrusted HTML emails.

A DNS TXT record (RFC 7208) listing the IP addresses and subnets authorized to send email on behalf of a domain. Receiving mail servers verify the connecting client IP against the domain's SPF record during the SMTP session.

A synonym for disposable email, emphasizing single-use intent where the address is used once and allowed to expire.

A 1x1 transparent image embedded in marketing HTML emails. When a mail client fetches the image from the sender's server, the request reveals the recipient's IP address, user-agent, and open timestamp. See our email privacy 101 guide.

A lightweight, sandboxed execution environment that processes individual network or SMTP events without persistent local disk state. tenmin.app separates inbound MIME parsing and read-only JSON API serving into isolated stateless handlers.