Just about when I thought I got everything out of Gmail, I discovered my top favorite feature. We have published over 30 tools in Gmail RoundUp 1 and almost 80 tools and tips in Gmail RoundUp 2 but never mentioned anything similar to this one. Tribute for this one goes to my ‘I am not into computers‘ type girlfriend.
Let’s say that your email address is ‘GeorgeBush@gmail.com’, basically everything sent to any of the following email addresses will be forwarded to your primary email.
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And that’s not all, you can place as many dots as you want, it can be even something like ‘G.e.o.r.g.e.B.u.s.h@gmail.com’ and you’ll still get it on ‘GeorgeBush@gmail.com’
Additionally, I just also found out that you can embed random text to your email ID using ‘+’ sign. That is to say ‘GeorgeBush+anythingyouwant@gmail.com’ can be used as your email address, as well.
Ok I got it. Now what ?
1. One email for every purpose
Instead of using different email addresses for various purposes (work, school, friends, etc.) you can use different variations of your Gmail and filter incoming mails by ’sent to’ address. For instance, all incoming mail sent to ‘Name.Surname@gmail.com’ can be put to folder ‘work’, messages sent to ‘NameSurname@gmail.com’ can be put to ‘friends’, ‘N.ameSurname@gmail.com’ can be used for newsletters, and so on.
2. Track/Block spammers
When signing up for some website, say thatwebsite.com, you can add thatwebsite to your Gmail user ID (eg. GeorgeBush+thatwebsite@gmail.com). This way you can block your subscription whenever you want and even identify those websites that distribute your email address to spammers.
More Tips? Surprise me in the comments.
Filed Under: Feature ¦ How-To
Tags: email, Gmail, How-To, privacy
Good One !!!
Not impressed.
yeah, knew this for a long time ago,
but still makeuseof.com has a really good style to tell this story to their readers.
i love their entertaining writing.
that is something taht i have to learn.
thanks
Then show us something mr badass.Remarks like yours is a typical sign of mr knowitall.Know the type.
Number one won’t work. Filters don’t distinguish the dots in the email address. To the filters, the dots are invisible. If you want to filter emails, better to set up a filter according to the sender’s email address.
Number two DOES work though. Although any spammers with an ounce of intelligence will remove everything after the “+”. I use the “+” method all the time to send emails to myself to different filters. So book reviews I like get emailed to myself at username+bookreviews@gmail.com and so on.
Beg to differ on point 1, have tested it and it was filtered successfully with an extra dot in my address.
A lot of websites don’t allow you to enter an email address that includes a + symbol.
As the + symbol is a legal character in an email address, blocking it would be akin to blocking the letter A. Which sites don’t allow it? Write to them and tell them that the programmer used a bad regex to validate email addresses.
That’s akin to emailing an ISP and telling them that a host on their network is spamming. They won’t do anything about it, because it’s not affecting them. Because most of the ‘validators’ for email online don’t support anything more than the absolute minimum, many times, my email dp [at] dp [dot] cx is considered invalid. I’m told that I need a 3 character username, and a 3 character TLD….
Validating email is easy. you can use client side scripting or even server side scripting.It’s just about the sites policy I think.
Some sites (webmasters) has been clever enough to know that gmail allow as to use + after our mail address as a kind of fake email. and they just don’t want people to register into their site with a fake address.
That’s why many website won’t allow you to register with email that has + on the address.
imw, thanks
Go create a gmail account with $ ‘ or ! in the address, those are valid too.
Go look at email validation code, most want just A-z and 0-9, and periods.
Hmmm… sounds strange, number one definitely works for me. Maybe different programs/clients handle filters differently. I use Thunderbird 2.0 and it definitely works for me. My filters are up and running. ;-).
What client/program are you using ?
@ Brian
I agree most of the bigger and popular ones won’t allow it, but smaller ones usually overlook this.
sorta old news, note that many places won’t accept a + character because it’s not considered valid - some e-mail clients may even trash incoming emails because it sees this as something hostile, e-mail addresses were formerly restricted to only alphanumeric characters and originally could not start with a number - but over time this has changed, but we’re still finicky over it.
I am just using the web-based Gmail and if someone emails me with dots in the username, it is disregarded by the filters and ends up in my inbox. Even Gmail seems to confirm this - http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10313
Brian is correct in that you can’t sign up for web-based services with a “+” in the email address. The website kicks it back as “invalid”. But it DOES work if you email someone. As I said, I email myself articles and text all the time with the “+” and it works perfectly.
if your email is, I dunno, lets say johndoe@gmail.com and you want to sing up to a website as john.doe@gmail.com, then you create a filter for this you can select archive to have it skip the inbox.
I do this as well as have the filter give it a label, depending on the site it comes form and there you have it, easy to be found as well as not cluttering up the inbox.
@ Mark
It seems that the filtering using dots in the email address will work only if you’re using desktop email client (Mozilla ThunderBird, Microsoft Outlook, etc.).
Thanks for correction
This is almost a duplicate of this story:
http://www.hitechsquad.com/2007/08/14/create-unique-email-addresses-instantly-with-gmail-and-the-sign/
[...] 1 Awesome Gmail tip You Don’t Know about. Seriously - MakeUseOf.com [...]
i knew this
I love reading articles titled, “Yadda Yadda you probably didn’t know.” I always like to read the comments, to see how far down I have to go before someone takes the time to point out that, yes, in fact, he knew it. Gotta love the egomaniacal postings.
Good point
I knew that you would post that!
[...] month I posted about my favorite Gmail feature, well this one is my TOP 1 for Firefox. Probably the most valued (and highly underestimated) [...]
[...] This is also a pretty cool tip about gmail. [...]
Going to go try it out. Didn’t know any of these features. Hey I knew it sent mail the old fashion way, never took the time to check out the rest.
this is old news, like a few years
yeah, and still many people didn’t know it.
just a shame that your g-mails become public domain after 2 yrs - read the license morons! no matter how many fancy features they put on ur account the fact remains that it’s not secure and that g-mail is a load of poop (put mildly)
Totally agree with Dave, some references would be nice.
Could you point this moron to the section in the terms of service that states that my gmail goes into the public domain after 2 years? No? I didn’t think so - it doesn’t exist.
[...] מעולה ל-Gmail מהמאמר הזה, מסתבר שניתן לשים בכתובת Gmail כמה נקודות שרוצים. למשל, את [...]
nice find
@pete:
I’m not sure where you get your poop from but it would be nice if you could provide a reference to it. I’ve just had a look through the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy for Gmail and neither have any reference to anything happening after two years. In fact, as far as your data is concerned, the Terms of Use states: (Section 5, last paragraph)
I’ve had several gmail accounts for about 3 years now and never knew that! Never had any problems with gmail, either. Great tip, I’ve always used filters, but this is definitely an innovative way.
Nice tips. I’ve knew some of these…
Smart. Thanks.
Awesome
Mailinator FTW !
you can use #1 in google’s webmail if you add a new account with this “user.na.me”:
Setting - Account - Add Another Mail Account (enter the “fake” em.a.il and then use your regular username)
I just wet my pants thanks to the sheer numbing awesomeness of this piece of trivia. I’ve been waiting all my life for such a momentous event, as have the limbless Iraqis and malnourished children everywhere. The rapture is truly at hand.
jesus.h@gmail.com
It’s nice to see that you’re spending your time participating in this post and ridiculing everyone else for it instead of doing something noble.
undefined functionality like that might change without notice, so the people who had the bogus email IDs might not be able to contact you in the future.
There is nothing wrong with such usage. After all, all those deviations forwarded to only one mailbox. Making it unusable may result in serious consequences for millions of service users (Gmail subscribers), so it’s highly unlikely.
Here’s the scenario that makes this worthless
1. Sign up for new cool site w/ email+somethingwitty@gmail.com
2. Allow time to go by, stop using new cool site
3. Attempt to log back, get forgotten password, cancel membership, etc for new cool site … having forgotten what ’somethingwitty’ was …
You now have no clue what your own email address is … because the site isn’t smart enough to know that email@gmail.com == email+something@gmail.com
And if they were smart enough to know that … then the whole thing would be a complete waste anyway
Good point.
Lucky you kept the signup e-mail in your gmail archives then. Even smarter of you to have it stored wisely in a label called “Account” or similar. But best of all: it was spectacular of you to notice that the original author pretty clearly states to use the site’s domain name as an obvious extra in your e-mail address.
Oh look, I just wrote something witty!
However … your Gmail inbox is big enough never to delete anything (at least it is for me) so you really wouldn’t have to remember +somethingwitty, you just have to remember “new cool site” and search for “new cool site” in your Gmail inbox …
Cool stuff. Does this work with Google for your domain emails?
I am not really sure what you mean. Are you referring to self hosted Gmail (like in Google Apps)? If so, I think it will work. I mean, it’s the same email program but just on a different server.
[...] I don’t know how good this tip is, but it’s another Gmail tip nonetheless. These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
the + thing… you didn’t know that? rtfm doggy dogg.
p.s. Luminus–
assuming that you asked because you have gmail for domains, and could have tested this in about .088321 seconds instead of asking a blog comment, i’ll answer the mystery for you:
yes.
In the interests of good taste you should use a sample email address such as
N.eofascist.Moron.President@gmail.com
instead of that vulgar name you actually cited.
I didn’t vote for him, but at least 25% of Americans did. So, I am just being “correct” here.
You can use http://www.e4ward.com . You sign up for a username and for each website you create an email just for it, in the form website@username.e4ward.com.
It’s quite a good idea, all it’s missing is a firefox extension to automatically generate the emails.
forgot to close the tag. The site is http://www.e4ward.com
CJB.net offers the same kind of service, if anyone is looking for more options
Thanks for the links, however my favorite one is Mintemail. You can read about it below
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-apps-to-solve-all-browsing-issues/
The only problem is that since this scheme is all in interpreting the email address, spammers harvesting email or site owners collecting your email can easily strip out the additional text just as gmail does. Spammers are known for adapting quickly
The only real way to do this is to use your own domain and have all the email address for it forward to your real address, and use the sitename@yourdomain.com as the email you give to an individual site.
In an adapted form, I’ve used your method for several years now. For every site where I need to register to make use of their services, I create a new address in the form of theirsitename@my.(sub.)domain. And from that domain everything is forwarded to my gmail address to take advantage of the spam- and mail-filtering options. Works miracles.
Nice find. Thanks for sharing.
Just so you know, the plus operator works with pretty much *any* email system, not just gmail.
[...] עוד פרטים כאן. [...]
bummer if you got your.name@gmail.com and not yourname@gmail.com. speaking from experience, yourname does not go to your.name, but i’m not sure if yourname gets mail from your.name.
i hope not. for reals.
It works in both cases. In Gmail’s eyes your.name == yourname.
NOT TRUE.
***WARNING***
Be very careful using this trick. When I first signed up for gmail, the account (for example) johnsmith@gmail.com was taken. I signed up for and was then given john.smith@gmail.com.
For a while, I was regularly receiving email intended for johnsmith@gmail.com, probably due do his using this same trick.
Sooner or later, someone WILL take your account name but with a period somewhere in the middle. You’ll suddenly stop getting emails from your contacts with that address.
That’s weird
If it’s so than it’s contradictory to the following note from Google itself
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10313
I originally signed up a couple years ago with my.name@gmail.com and to this day I get a couple legitimate emails per week to whomever signed up with the exact name without the period.
Gmail denys there’s a bug, but I keep getting someone elses mail.
I am also getting someone else’s mail. Although I never get any of his personal emails, rather subscriptions to newsletters, car deals, realtors in the area, etc. I thought that this perosn was purposely trying to spam me for taking the email address, but after reading this maybe it’s just a mistake. Whatevers the case, it’s very annoying for me to have to go and delete all these emails addressed to “Jose”.
I never heard this before.Honestly it is troublesome to use different variation of gmail address. Anyway you are awesome!
I already knew this.
**** you.
LOL !
@ matelot, @smart
Guyz, are you 12 ? 15? Tell us.
Are you sure that someone can’t just register George.Bush@gmail.com when you have GeorgeBush@gmail.com and get email to that address?
Yes, I am sure.
Aibek - you are wrong. I have a first.name@gmail.com acct and someone else has firstname@gmail.com. I rec’v his emails. Definitely can happen - I have someone else’s emails to prove it!
It’s weird. Check this out
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10313
the same thing happens to me a couple times a week, there are two of us (at least) with the same address the period being the only difference
I haven’t tried this one yet..I will sign up for an account and see if it works..^^..thanks for sharing it aibek..^^
Enjoy
This tip has been recirculated at least five times in the last three years of my time scanning the del.icio.us/popular links .. try something new will you.
This is not a good idea because it teaches our “girlfriends” how to use email Gmail’s way. Now people are going to start thinking that you can put your.name.email@whatever.com.
[...] under: fractally weird — jhorna @ 10:24 am Tags: avoiding spam, filtering email, gmail tip This tip is seriously really awesome, and I definitely didn’t know of it! Way to go, makeuseof… [...]
I knew about this already. Seriously.
Good for you, buddy.
My gmail account is somethingsomething@gmail.com
And there’s a guy out there that has the account something.something@gmail.com . . . sometimes I get his emails. but he’s never received my emails, so he claims.
We’ve corresponded about the problem and sent emails to Google with no reply, of course. Eventually I convinced him to stop using the account. I told him if he didn’t stop using the account, I might not forward him his email (some of it pretty confidential business stuff). I felt a little bad but I had the account first.
Perhaps Google has since “fixed” the problem . . . I don’t know. Pretty interesting situation we had there though.
wow are you sure ?
According to this gmail help, this is impossible
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=29424
It’s true. Perhaps google fixed it, but I’m also one with a something.something@gmail.com email address, and I have occasionally received emails destined for somethingsomething@gmail.com.
Aibek, if you want proof of this email me privately. I will try to set the record straight.