Good questions

temp.cool is a free tool for sending messages that self-destruct. You write a secret, get a link, and the message is destroyed once it has been read or when its timer runs out. No account needed.

Yes. No account, no ads. Companies can pay for their own branded version, which keeps the lights on.

From 5 minutes to 30 days, your pick. Whatever comes first, the timer or the last allowed view, shreds it.

Up to 10,000 characters of text. That is plenty for passwords, keys, addresses and notes.

No. temp.cool runs in any modern browser on a phone, tablet or computer. The person you send it to does not need anything either.

No. Your browser encrypts the message before sending it, and the key stays in the link. We only hold scrambled text, and we delete even that once it's read.

AES-256-GCM, done by your browser’s built-in WebCrypto. The key is 256 random bits made fresh for every message. Passwords are stretched with PBKDF2 (600,000 rounds of SHA-256) on your device.

Only as encrypted text, in Cloudflare data centres inside the European Union. Each message lives in its own storage object that deletes itself when the message ends.

You get 4 tries. After the 4th wrong password the message destroys itself, so nobody can keep guessing.

We don’t store IP addresses with messages and there are no trackers, ads or cookies. Message pages load nothing from other companies. Our public pages use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless and counts visits without identifying you.

It won't. The link opens a "Show the secret" screen first. Nothing is read until a person taps the button.

Yes. When you create a secret you also get a private manage link. Open it to see whether the message was read, or to shred it straight away.

Open your manage link. It shows whether the message is still waiting, how many times it was opened, and when it ended.

Yes, if you choose so. You can allow 1, 2, 5 or 10 opens. After the last one it is destroyed.

It was already opened, the timer ran out, the sender shredded it, or someone entered the wrong password 4 times. Once it is gone, nobody can get it back.