One of the tricks you can use if you have your own domain is to create unlimited virtual addresses to make it easier to sort mail and identify spam. For example, you can create a separate email address for each account you establish with an online merchant, such as amazon@mydomain.com and ebay@mydomain.com. As long as you set up a "catchall" address with your email provider, all of these will be forwarded to your main account, and you can use your email client to sort and filter these as you see fit. Well, it turns out you can
do exactly the same thing with Gmail, without having to pay to set up your own domain or deal with mail servers. Just add a plus sign and any text you want after your address. Gmail will ignore anything from the plus sign forward and send this message to your Gmail account. You can then use Gmail's filters to sort your mail based on these suffixes. So, expanding on the example above, you can create a virtual mailbox called myname+amazon@gmail.com or myname+ebay@gmail.com and then use these in registration forms. Pretty handy!
Tags: freeware, gmail+google+hack+mail, GmailGoogleHackMail
Facebook Plunges Again
Tumblr 101: Tips And Tricks To Get Started
Comments
8
Subscribe to commentstppAug 31st 2005 11:53AM
This works on any mail server that's using sendmail. I've been using that on my forwarding service forever.
Unfortunately a lot of the retailers and others (ab)using your email addresses don't accept plus symbols in email addresses, so this doesn't work as well as it could.
It's a great way to track who is selling your data to whom.
RoyAug 31st 2005 2:00PM
For most MTAs, it's configurable. I run Postfix locally, and have my continuation character set to '-', which seems to be accepted by most everywhere I've used it.
Juan AguilarAug 31st 2005 2:41PM
I have been using virtual mailboxes for some time on my primary e-mail account to see if anybody reputable was selling my e-mail address. I have yet to find an example where this has happened. The Jelly Bean people, on the other hand...
KissTheRingAug 31st 2005 3:19PM
I've been using this for a rew weeks now and I would hardly call this a hack, more like a feature of gmail.
Blog JonesAug 31st 2005 9:26PM
This "feature" has been giving me a lot of trouble: A lot of registration databases have a hard time with plus signs.
phizmSep 1st 2005 3:11AM
Anyway to re-configure the plus sign through google?
MacSep 1st 2005 3:15AM
Intellectually drafted article. seems to grab attention at once.The writer has a good knowledge of the subject and makes reading interesting.
markOct 20th 2005 10:13AM
I don't know if this helps those sites for which a + doesn't work, but according to ExtremeTech, the dot in the address works the same way.