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Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Use Gmail Generate Unlimited E-mail Addresses
More real world examples:
Find out who is spamming you: Be sure to use plus-addressing for every form you fill out online and give each site a different plus address.
Example: You could use
pinkyrocks+nytimes@gmail.com for nytimes.com
pinkyrocks+freestuff@gmail.com for freestuff.com
Then you can tell which site has given your e-mail address to spammers, and automatically send them to the trash.
Automatically label your incoming mail: I've talked about that above.
Archive your mail: If you receive periodic updates about your bank account balance or are subscribed to a lot of mailing lists that you don't check often, then you can send that sort of mail to the archives and bypass your Inbox.
Example: For the mailing list, you could give pinkyrocks+mailinglist1@gmail.com as your address, and assign a filter that will archive mail to that address automatically. Then you can just check in once in a while on the archive if you want to catch up.
Update (9/7): Several commentors have indicated that this is not a Gmail specific trick. kl says Fastmail has enabled this feature as well. caliban10 reports that a lot of sites reject addresses with a plus sign. You might use other services like Mailinator for disposable addresses instead. pbinder recommends using services like SpamGourmet, which redirects mail to your real address.
Tags: gmail, google, email, email tips
Labels: Technology
Comment Archive
Reader Comments:
c. staines writes @ 7:36 PM, September 06, 2006 Dude. You are a life saver. I've been using my domain to generate random e-mails (a simple catch-all), but half of the mails don't get past the default spam filter.
This saves a LOT of time!
Thanks, man!
Thinkingman.com writes @ 8:19 PM, September 06, 2006 I use this with my own domain to find out who's selling my email address, and it works very well. If you own your own domain name and set yourself up an additional "catchall" account (don't use your main account, please!), just configure your server to not bounce the "erroneously" addressed messages!
davejk writes @ 8:27 PM, September 06, 2006 Seems like spammers would learn to delete the + and everything else up to @ for a gmail address.
Robert J. Carr writes @ 8:43 PM, September 06, 2006 Similarly, but maybe historically, gmail didn't differntiate between pinkyrocks@gmail and pinky.rocks@gmail. This caused a lot of problems, not sure if they ever fixed it.
simran writes @ 9:34 PM, September 06, 2006 This is not a feature google has "created" ... its part of the standard RFC... gmail might be one of the few mail clients that implement this part of the RFC but its definitely not a google creation!
(stuff after the + sign is a "comment" ... yes, as per the standard, you can have comments in the email address)
http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html
simran writes @ 9:35 PM, September 06, 2006 This is not a feature google has "created" ... its part of the standard RFC... gmail might be one of the few mail clients that implement this part of the RFC but its definitely not a google creation!
(stuff after the + sign is a "comment" ... yes, as per the standard, you can have comments in the email address)
http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html
KL writes @ 10:46 PM, September 06, 2006 GMail isn't the only one to implement this. FastMail has had this feature since its beginnings!
Caliban10 writes @ 11:58 PM, September 06, 2006 But, unfortunately, a lot of email address forms reject an address with a + in it.
spacey writes @ 12:10 AM, September 07, 2006 "Automatically label your incoming mail: I've talked about that above."
Then why do you mention it again? Are you perhaps talking to yourself? Strange.
Argentice writes @ 1:00 AM, September 07, 2006 This is quite a bad way of finding out who is spamming you! Try http://www.spammotel.com instead. It works great, I've been using it for years with no spam!
Zack writes @ 6:42 AM, September 07, 2006 Cool tip an absolute lifesaver! Submitted tip at howtohut
http://www.howtohut.com/howto_track_your_spammer_with_gmail
edwin11 writes @ 7:42 AM, September 07, 2006 Thanks, this is very useful. To add on, Gmail ignores dots (.) in their e-mail addresses as well. Not nearly as useful though, but there you go, i have it described on http://edwin11.blogspot.com/2006/09/unlimited-e-mail-addresses-with-gmail.html.
One thing regarding using this feature to counter spam, if this feature becomes widely used in future, organisations which sell our e-mail addresses may simply extract away the "+something" first.
Angel writes @ 12:27 PM, September 07, 2006 I wonder if digg.com already knows about this. I could register 20 times without opening bogus email accounts.
pbinder writes @ 1:39 PM, September 07, 2006 I started to use this but gave up after a majority of websites say a plus is invalid. I also don't like it because your real e-mail is still there for anyone who knows about adding a plus.
My favorite way to defeat spam is http://www.SpamGourmet.com/
All you do is set your info up with the website, confirm an e-mail, and for the most part, never really need to go back to the website. How to is on the first page of the website.
pbinder writes @ 1:39 PM, September 07, 2006 I started to use this but gave up after a majority of websites say a plus is invalid. I also don't like it because your real e-mail is still there for anyone who knows about adding a plus.
My favorite way to defeat spam is http://www.SpamGourmet.com/
All you do is set your info up with the website, confirm an e-mail, and for the most part, never really need to go back to the website. How to is on the first page of the website.
pbinder writes @ 1:39 PM, September 07, 2006 I started to use this but gave up after a majority of websites say a plus is invalid. I also don't like it because your real e-mail is still there for anyone who knows about adding a plus.
My favorite way to defeat spam is http://www.SpamGourmet.com/
All you do is set your info up with the website, confirm an e-mail, and for the most part, never really need to go back to the website. How to is on the first page of the website.
arlandi writes @ 9:28 PM, September 07, 2006 this is great. another way to defeat those spammers. there is another way to get disposable emails. one that i have been using for the last few months is http://www.jetable.org.
Christoph Paterok writes @ 11:27 PM, September 07, 2006 Hey this is realy good... Thanks for this tipp...
glam2 writes @ 2:28 PM, September 09, 2006 Holy shit, are you stupid? This is about as much of a "quirk" as is the ability of a lightbulb to produce light. FFS, it's been in the gmail "help" section since day one. Fucking retard.
Anonymous writes @ 2:48 PM, September 10, 2006 "Seems like spammers would learn to delete the + and everything else up to @ for a gmail address.
# posted by davejk : 8:27 PM, September 06, 2006"
Well, I will post my support here for spamgourmet.com - not even my closest friends (unless they are on gmail and I really trust their computer savvy) get my protected address! Today's count says I have 54 sg addresses. I use that and Gmail to have a nice relatively tight security mailing system (also use "bcc" instead of "to" and advanced sg mode).
Anonymous writes @ 1:56 PM, November 13, 2006 Other Uses of Such Addresses
Did you people know of a previous use of such email addresses?
I once heard that it was also used to re-route your emails through alternative Internet routes :)...
It was said that if you added a previous domain from another part of the world, then the email would search for that previous domain to route through www. And later, when it had checked that there was no user with such an address there, it would re-route to the second piece of the email domain...
That is also cool, don't you think so?
Robson Lee writes @ 2:16 PM, November 13, 2006 I hadn't heard about using it for re-routing emails, but it does sound really cool. Adds a layer of redundancy, but doesn't mean you'll receive two copies of an email (since the other way is just to enter two email addresses in To: field).
As far as other uses, some users have mentioned that the plus-addressing is used to add a comment to the email address.
Anonymous writes @ 3:14 PM, November 15, 2006 Does anyone know how to implement this same feature, say, on a Linux box? Maybe one running cPanel?
:)
Anonymous writes @ 2:26 PM, January 13, 2007 (re: "explanatory" update)
No, this doesn't work because mail servers consider + equal to @.
The email address pinkyrocks@work@gmail.com is simply invalid; if gmail interpreted it as this then you would never even receive the mail.
Don't make crap up (that this is how all mail servers work).
Try sending a mail to an address with an extra @ symbol. It won't work.
Maybe your ISP allows you to login to your POP server with a '+' instead of an '@' in your username, but that would be an ISP-specific thing. It is never the case that '+' is interpreted as '@' when sending or receiving mail.
Anonymous writes @ 7:05 PM, February 17, 2007 Cool. I don't use Gmail, but I'm passing this on to people who do!
Anonymous writes @ 11:05 AM, February 24, 2007 Ugh, forget Spamgourmet - it's ugly. I used it until I saw the light and progressed on to www.emailias.com. Not an affiliate link - have upwards of 600 addresses with Emailias. Plus the owner, Paul, is a nice guy.
Anonymous writes @ 1:43 AM, March 02, 2007 I am so happy when i found this blog.Plz share to me also how to publish google adsense on my blog www.FindFinder.blogspot.com
Anonymous writes @ 9:22 AM, November 16, 2007 trashmail.net is the best for disposable email addresses.
you can get a firefox extension that lets you pase a random disposable address anywhere:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1813
Conspiracy Master writes @ 6:32 AM, February 23, 2008 You my friend are awesome. Believe it or not I'm a Web Developer and until recently I only just found out about this method.
It's especially great for as you said pin-pointing spam.
- Dwayne Charrington.
http://www.dwaynecharrington.com
Simeon writes @ 6:08 PM, March 27, 2008 doesn't work that well -- most places have figured out not to allow you to put a + in your email address when you're signing up for something
samson367 writes @ 2:51 PM, March 01, 2019 nice post. its really helpful. pls, how can i disable comment on my site. https://rank10best.blogspot.com
Previous Posts
- Gmail Search Operators: Find E-mail More Efficiently
- Subscribe to Digital Alchemy
- Surf Safely with Internet Explorer
- More Google Search Tips
- Google Search Tips
- Delete Sensitive Information on your Cell Phone
- RadioShack uses e-mail to fire workers
- Focus Media Goes to the Movies
- Enzyme cuts out possible Carcinogen in Baked Goods
- Firefox Adoption Stalled?
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