Source: https://www.cairl.co/docs/guides/mailgap
Content revision: sha256:b66022d6a0b2b82e44df24fddaf4bc9c747d4d1cce2bda99b9d758314faccb8e

# How MailGap keeps inboxes separate

## What MailGap is

MailGap gives you a separate address and a place inside CAIRL to read the messages sent to it. The gap is between that correspondence and your primary personal or business inbox: MailGap does not forward incoming message bodies or attachments into that inbox.

Use it when you want to choose which services and contacts receive your primary address.

CAIRL recognizes cairlmail.com and mailgap.app as public first-party mail domains. Use the complete address shown in MailGap, including its domain. Domain availability depends on the service configuration; both domains are not necessarily available to choose.

## How this differs from forwarding

A forwarding alias sends incoming messages onward to another inbox. MailGap keeps message content in its own inbox. Optional activity alerts are separate from forwarding the original message.

MailGap is not a technical air gap. Email still passes through email infrastructure. MailGap also cannot prevent you from copying or sharing information you can read.

## Activity alerts

Where enabled, alerts go to your CAIRL account email address. They can contain activity counts, masked aliases, receipt times, message sizes, attachment indicators, and account-related information such as an alert-credit balance.

Alerts do not include the original sender’s name, message subject or body, or attachment contents; they may show an attachment indicator. An alert is therefore a limited disclosure of activity, not a forwarded copy of the message. Alert availability and delivery depend on the applicable settings and sending controls.

## Reading and replying

The normal reading view displays plain text without loading tracking images. Known tracking parameters are stripped from URLs, and links in the message body appear as plain text. A separate Links panel lets you choose to open them. These protections do not establish that a destination is trustworthy. Attachments are held and are not available for normal download or inline viewing. This does not mean CAIRL never receives or stores original content.

Eligible replies use your MailGap alias as the sender address. Any personal information you include in the reply can still identify you. Sending controls apply, and acceptance by an email provider does not guarantee delivery to the recipient.

MailGap containment aliases support eligible replies to incoming messages. They do not provide unrestricted sending of new messages to arbitrary recipients.

## Managing an alias and its messages

Pausing stops an alias receiving new messages and keeps existing messages. Rotating creates a replacement address and pauses the old alias; the old alias cannot be reactivated. Burning permanently disables an alias and immediately removes its stored message details from your view. CAIRL attempts to remove stored files for up to 25 messages during the burn request; any additional or failed file deletions follow the scheduled cleanup window below.

Deleting a message removes it from your MailGap view immediately. The message then remains in a seven-day cleanup grace period. A retention job runs daily at 02:00 UTC and removes the eligible database record plus every stored object version from active MailGap storage. With the scheduler and storage service operating normally, scheduled removal completes between seven and eight days after deletion. If storage deletion fails, CAIRL keeps the deletion pending and retries on the next daily run rather than claiming completion; CAIRL does not claim a maximum cleanup time while a provider failure continues.

## Related resources

- [MailGap product page](https://www.cairl.co/products/mailgap)