
Gmail trick: multiplying your address - pyderman
http://blog.hipwerk.com/gmail-trick-using-multiple-addresses-for-one-single-account/
======
PinguTS
Incomplete Article for old well known stuff:

1\. "Gmail has a wildcard for the + sign as it doesn't recognize it nor any
characters that follow it." This wrong. It is well documented and called
aliasing within Google. There is even a support page for it:
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/12096?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/12096?hl=en)

2\. Even that is documented:
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/8158?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/8158?hl=en)

3\. Even that is documented:
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/159001?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/159001?hl=en)
There are also a lot of ccTLDs that Google has for Gmail. Also those will
work.

~~~
danielweber
Not everyone knows everything. I knew all of this, but lots of people don't.

If there's one thing I think I could change about HN, it would be that we'd be
easier on people who don't know things. Many times I'll read an article about
the new version of PolyDoopWerks, and be told that it's the Uber-of-OOD-
builders, and have _no idea what 's going on_.

~~~
sonnym
It isn't always easy when something does seem to be common knoweldge, but you
are correct that people try to be more understanding. I have adopted the
attitude from this XKCD comic.
[https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

~~~
jebus989
Ironically that comic and XKCD in general falls into the category of things
that are very widely-known but people still present as new information. (The
prime example being cryptography discussions linking to correct horse battery
staple.)

------
diggan
Also called sub-addressing in RFC 5233[0] or Address Tags. Gmail is not the
only one of the email providers that enables this. Yahoo, Apple, Outlook,
Fastmail and others also support this. More information at Wikipedia:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Address_tags](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Address_tags)

[0] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5233](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5233)

~~~
pyderman
Nice! Didn't knew that other providers do it aswell.

------
aiurtourist
I highly recommend Sneakemail.com and have been using them for over a decade.
They let you set up keywords, like "foo", and then you can mail anything-
foo@sneakemail.com (or snkmail.com, since a few sites block the former domain)
and it creates an alias. On the Sneakemail web UI you can enable/disable
aliases and see recent mail. An alias can forward up to 5 people or so, and
when someone sends you mail, if you reply you'll reply through Sneakemail.

Of course it's also worth mentioning Mailinator.com (one-off throwaway
aliases, but public) and 10minutemail.com (super-disposable temporary email
addresses).

~~~
ryan-c
I've also been using sneakemail for at least twelve years. They also let you
set up addresses with a bunch of randomly generated letters/numbers that are
opaquely mapped to you, but you have to log in to do that.

The only problem is that some sites ban their domains - in particular Adafruit
does this (they banned _existing_ use of it, not just new sign ups), and their
support said basically "we won't whitelist your address even though you've
been ordering stuff from us for over five years".

------
dkopi
//TODO: Check user_email for multiple variations of the same account by
calculating and storing a canonical e-mail field in the DB as well.

~~~
voidlogic
Assuming you are trying to prevent people from creating multiple accounts on
your service... keep in mind they could create e-mail forwarders at other
domains, this just stops a very easy method.

Also, more importantly, this would have to only apply to a set a whitelisted
domains, plenty of non-gmail systems would treat these variations as distinct
addresses. So without a set of domains to apply this logic too, you could end
up stopping users from registering with their own normal/actual address.

------
maxmcd
For #2. The dots are completely irrelevant, so you can actually add and
remove.

    
    
        m.axm@gmail.com
        ma.xm@gmail.com
        m.ax.m@gmail.com
        m.a.x.m@gmail.com
    

etc etc etc

------
SippinLean
Easier to just get a custom domain and set up a catch-all account to forward
to your gmail.

This way you can do [sender]@domain.com, [company]@domain.com, john1, john2,
john3@domain.com and never run out of options. If one starts spamming you can
just stop a particular [company]@domain from forwarding.

~~~
sinatra
Keep in mind that catch-all accounts usually get a lot of random spam. If
you're using this domain to signup for various services, at some point,
spammers will become aware of it. And, they'll start sending a lot of spam to
(random string that spammer comes up with)@your-domain.com.

~~~
PinguTS
I have catch-all running for a few years now, but no real spam problem. Maybe
due to the fact that greylisting still works pretty effective. Most of the
spam I receive is on my GMX including the email address I never used for sign-
ups of any sort.

------
jj00
I'm sorry, but I've grown to hate this feature. I keep receiving emails from
accounts I didn't sign up for, only to discover the person (with a similar
name) used an email address like "senor.developez@gmail.com" or
"senordevelopez" and the site itself defaults to "gmail.com". These are not
off-the-wall websites, I've had long conversations with Netflix and a
satellite TV service. You'd be surprised how many website do not authenticate
the email account given.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The simple solution to this is to request a password reset from that service
and disable their account.

------
pi-err
I have found a few sites reject the + in gmail addresses. I also suspect most
DB (or wannabe spammners) would know about this and remove anything after the
+ sign. Same goes for the "." trick. Still good to know though.

I'm now using Blur
([https://www.abine.com/index.html](https://www.abine.com/index.html)). Very
effective so far at creating aliases pointing to my real email. Only worried
on how they'll fund their operations long term.

------
palehose
I have an application set up with Devise handling authentication for me and
Devise allows me to create multiple accounts with the same email address.
Considering how commonly used Devise is for setting up a site with Ruby on
Rails, this is a huge open hole for a lot of websites who might not appreciate
multiple user accounts tied to the same email.

------
thrownaway2424
It kinda bugs me when people describe +foo as a "gmail trick". That type of
addressing predates gmail, and exists outside of it still. In fact the plus is
not the only form of this. qmail uses the dash, and postfix allows you to
configure anything as a separator.

------
penguat
I'm using the '+' for automating email tests - using that and Gmail's API I
can set up asynchronous tests against unique email addresses, and test them as
they arrive. This is a crucial part of integration testing with partner
companies.

------
gohrt
This is why email is wonderful. It works so well that people are marveling
about learning standard features that were deployed _before they were born_.

If only we stuck to a few good ideas instead of overwhelming ourselves and
each other with bad ideas.

------
amouat
I use the + trick, but several signups don't allow the + sign in e-mail
addresses.

~~~
lost_name
I've run into a situation where I was able to sign up using the + in the
e-mail, but not login (or unsubscribe from their newletter) with the same
address.

~~~
slayed0
They probably recognized the + and stripped it, as well as all subsequent
characters, from your address upon form entry.

~~~
mod
They should probably strip it from the login form, then.

As a mediocre web dev, that'd be my next step.

------
cfontes
What I want is something like a 10-minute-mail inside my gmail account!!!

~~~
sp332
Yahoo Mail does this. You can make a specific new address and then delete it
when you're done.
[https://help.yahoo.com/kb/mail/SLN3523.html](https://help.yahoo.com/kb/mail/SLN3523.html)

~~~
thrownaway2424
Fastmail also does this. They have hundreds of domains you can use for
disposable accounts.

------
paulrr
I never understood why people rely on the + trick to determine the source of
new spam. Wouldn't a smart spammer / list-seller simply strip the suffix from
all @gmail.com addresses?

~~~
mbertrand
I've thought the same thing since I encountered this trick a few years back.
My guess is that most email providers don't allow the use of a "+" in the
address and as a result its viewed as a fringe case and not accounted for.

------
jpalomaki
According to my experience quite many email address validators on web sites
don't consider the address with "+" as valid.

------
tzury
I used to send it at mailing lists and sign-ups.

However, I Noticed spammers have learned the trick and omit the "+..".

~~~
kps

      >  I Noticed spammers have learned the trick and omit the "+..".
    

If you control your own email,

1\. Configure a different character, e.g. ‘-’, as your subaddress separator.

2\. Set up ‘joe@example.com’ as a spam trap.

3\. Set up ‘joe+from@example.com’ as an email address.

4\. Provide ‘joe+from-random-signup@example.com’ externally.

