BINIT

What BINIT does

BINIT reads your mailbox on your iPhone, works out who keeps writing to you, and gives you three things to do about it: leave their mailing list, clear out everything they've sent, or block them so every future scan clears them too.

Nothing about your mail leaves the phone. There is no BINIT server, no account to make, and nothing is uploaded — the app talks to your mail provider directly, the same way Apple's own Mail app does.

Common questions

It asks for Face ID when I read my mailbox

Your mailbox sign-in is kept encrypted on the phone, and the key to it sits behind Face ID. BINIT asks once per read, not once per mailbox. If Face ID doesn't match, it offers to try again — nothing is lost.

Gmail, iCloud or Yahoo won't accept my password

Those providers don't let other apps use your real password. They give out a separate app password instead, made on their own website, which is what BINIT needs. Outlook and Hotmail are different — they sign in on Microsoft's own page and no password is typed into BINIT at all.

I deleted mail by mistake

Clearing a sender out moves their mail to your Deleted folder. It isn't erased, and you can drag any of it back for as long as your provider keeps deleted mail.

I paid, and a new phone says it's locked

Open the Mailbox screen and press I've already bought it. The purchase lives with your Apple Account, not with BINIT, so it comes back as long as you're signed in to the same one.

Blocking a sender didn't stop the mail arriving

Blocking is BINIT's own list, not your provider's — it can't stop mail being delivered. What it does is clear whatever a blocked sender has sent, automatically, every time you read your mailbox.

Why does it ask for a password on the leak screen?

Only on Check a password, and only if you use it — there is no way to answer "has this password already been stolen?" without the password. It is scrambled on your phone and only the first five characters of the scramble are sent, which match about half a million different passwords, so the service can't tell which one you asked about. Nothing about it is written down afterwards. The privacy page explains it in full.

What it costs

Reading your mailbox is free, always. Leaving lists, clearing mail out and blocking senders are unlocked by one payment, once. It isn't a subscription: there's nothing running, nothing renews, and there's nothing to cancel.