4 ms·

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...

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...