5 ms·

Gmail allows you to create unlimited unique addresses by using the + symbol. so you could do: username+trello@gmail.com. It's worked well for me for a few years

Gmail allows you to create unlimited unique addresses by using the + symbol. so you could do: username+trello@gmail.com. It's worked well for me for a few years. The only downsides I see are that (very few) sites still complain about the perfectly legal + symbol and some sites / bots are probably starting to reverse engineer that since it still exposes your username. But so far, I've yet to have a single site or service expose my primary mail account, so it at least helps. Finally: this is a fantastic hack for testing your own signup flows. :)

carc1n0gen 9y ago
Not a Gmail specific thing. That's something you can do with email in general.
- amenod 9y ago
  I believe it is Gmail specific. Cursory search reveals that sendmail does that too, but I don't think it is specified in RFC. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
  - e12e 9y ago
    It's more Sendmail and Exim and others did it, and Gmail does it too - not the other way around;) With qmail the "standard"[1] was username-alias@example.com, rather than username+alias@example.com. I rather prefer that - but then my (user)name(s) don't contain any hyphens. Either way I think it looks better with system usernames - firstname.lastname@example.com was/is usually handled as a separate form of alias look-up anyway. [1] http://www.lifewithqmail.org/lwq.html#dot-qmail-files http://www.lifewithqmail.org/lwq.html#dot-qmail-files See section "4.1.5. extension addresses" [ed: and I recall using tmda as an anti-spam system - it inserts an encrypted tag in the alias portion, that can be stamped with an expiry date, and tied to a sender address (eg hmac(userkey, sender@example.com+01012018) => xyxyzzzzz - give sender@example.com the address user-xyxyzzzz@example.net - and mail to that address will be accepted from only sender@example.com until 1/1/2018. http://tmda.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/AboutTmda http://tmda.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/AboutTmda ]
  - carc1n0gen 9y ago
    I don't have a source to a RFC, but all email's I've ever used let me do this. Including multiple different hosting services with my own domains, and my current work which is MS Exchange.
- ballenf 9y ago
  Not really, according to the spec the '+' can be interpreted as part of the email address. The approach gmail takes seems to have gained widespread adoption, but it's not mandated by the spec. Believe I saw this on HN recently: http://haacked.com/archive/2007/08/21/i-knew-how-to-validate-an-email-address-until-i.aspx/ http://haacked.com/archive/2007/08/21/i-knew-how-to-validate...
bdav24 9y ago
Hi toddmorey, yes a well-known trick ;) The downside is that the + part can be easily removed by spammers.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  I have a personal Gmail account that I give to real life friends and real met-in-person humans who want to directly contact me. And then a web gmail where everything is labeled with a plus(if websites don't accept the plus, I use a series of periods in the first portion of the email to make it unique. Then, I forward all emails with whitelisted +whatever's from my web mail to my personal mail.

carc1n0gen 9y ago

Not a Gmail specific thing. That's something you can do with email in general.

amenod 9y ago
I believe it is Gmail specific. Cursory search reveals that sendmail does that too, but I don't think it is specified in RFC. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
- e12e 9y ago
  It's more Sendmail and Exim and others did it, and Gmail does it too - not the other way around;) With qmail the "standard"[1] was username-alias@example.com, rather than username+alias@example.com. I rather prefer that - but then my (user)name(s) don't contain any hyphens. Either way I think it looks better with system usernames - firstname.lastname@example.com was/is usually handled as a separate form of alias look-up anyway. [1] http://www.lifewithqmail.org/lwq.html#dot-qmail-files http://www.lifewithqmail.org/lwq.html#dot-qmail-files See section "4.1.5. extension addresses" [ed: and I recall using tmda as an anti-spam system - it inserts an encrypted tag in the alias portion, that can be stamped with an expiry date, and tied to a sender address (eg hmac(userkey, sender@example.com+01012018) => xyxyzzzzz - give sender@example.com the address user-xyxyzzzz@example.net - and mail to that address will be accepted from only sender@example.com until 1/1/2018. http://tmda.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/AboutTmda http://tmda.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/AboutTmda ]
- carc1n0gen 9y ago
  I don't have a source to a RFC, but all email's I've ever used let me do this. Including multiple different hosting services with my own domains, and my current work which is MS Exchange.
ballenf 9y ago
Not really, according to the spec the '+' can be interpreted as part of the email address. The approach gmail takes seems to have gained widespread adoption, but it's not mandated by the spec. Believe I saw this on HN recently: http://haacked.com/archive/2007/08/21/i-knew-how-to-validate-an-email-address-until-i.aspx/ http://haacked.com/archive/2007/08/21/i-knew-how-to-validate...

bdav24 9y ago

Hi toddmorey, yes a well-known trick ;) The downside is that the + part can be easily removed by spammers.

oh_sigh 9y ago
I have a personal Gmail account that I give to real life friends and real met-in-person humans who want to directly contact me. And then a web gmail where everything is labeled with a plus(if websites don't accept the plus, I use a series of periods in the first portion of the email to make it unique. Then, I forward all emails with whitelisted +whatever's from my web mail to my personal mail.