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Gmail has this capability built in because you can just add +whatever to the end of the name and it's an alias to your email account, and you can block the your

by Pxtl 8y ago

Gmail has this capability built in because you can just add +whatever to the end of the name and it's an alias to your email account, and you can block the yourname+whatever@gmail.com it as needed. Only problem is many sites mistakenly think + is an invalid char. No overhead of creating addresses, you have an infinite address space for your account to play with freely. More mail providers should offer such a workflow.

checkyoursudo 8y ago
If you send me a name+whatever@gmail.com then I automatically know what your real address is and can strip the +whatever and now you're stuck. With aliases, I can drop the alias and you can not easily guess my real email address. Just depends on what you want, or what you use it for.
- Semaphor 8y ago
  Not to mention that FM also allows plus addressing as well as a different style name@whatever.domain.com
  - funkaster 8y ago
    how would that work ? don't you need to set up the MX records for that particular subdomain?
    - fredsted 8y ago
      you could set up a wildcard CNAME
      - jlgaddis 8y ago
        Please don't. Per RFC, an MX RR cannot point to a CNAME.
        fredsted 8y ago
        That's not what I'm suggesting though.
    - danieldk 8y ago
      You set up wildcard MX records, such as for *.yourdomain.tld. With Fastmail sets this up automatically if you let them handle your DNS, though you can (obviously) disable it.
- chipperyman573 8y ago
  This is true, but most spam email is automated. You're still correct though, your solution is more secure (and also what I use). It's always possible the form you submit automatically strips the +whatever from your email silently. I believe facebook does this (at least when checking to see if the email you're using has already been registered).
xseparator 8y ago
The one downside I've found for this is that many email forms prohibit "+" in an address. They shouldn't as it's a perfectly valid character for an email address, but you know...devs.
shakestheclown 8y ago
I used to use the + system but ran into too many issues of it not being accepted and it seems some are smart enough to strip off the + and everything after. I moved to wildcard forwarder on my own domain so that *@mydomain.com get forwarded to my main email account. This gives me all the tracking I want and I can ban addresses if needed. That still gets me the zero overhead and practically infinite addresses with none of the downsides of gmail--and I can easily change my main email account as an added bonus.

by Pxtl 8y ago

checkyoursudo 8y ago

If you send me a name+whatever@gmail.com then I automatically know what your real address is and can strip the +whatever and now you're stuck. With aliases, I can drop the alias and you can not easily guess my real email address. Just depends on what you want, or what you use it for.

Semaphor 8y ago
Not to mention that FM also allows plus addressing as well as a different style name@whatever.domain.com
- funkaster 8y ago
  how would that work ? don't you need to set up the MX records for that particular subdomain?
  - fredsted 8y ago
    you could set up a wildcard CNAME
    - jlgaddis 8y ago
      Please don't. Per RFC, an MX RR cannot point to a CNAME.
      - fredsted 8y ago
        That's not what I'm suggesting though.
  - danieldk 8y ago
    You set up wildcard MX records, such as for *.yourdomain.tld. With Fastmail sets this up automatically if you let them handle your DNS, though you can (obviously) disable it.
chipperyman573 8y ago
This is true, but most spam email is automated. You're still correct though, your solution is more secure (and also what I use). It's always possible the form you submit automatically strips the +whatever from your email silently. I believe facebook does this (at least when checking to see if the email you're using has already been registered).

xseparator 8y ago

The one downside I've found for this is that many email forms prohibit "+" in an address. They shouldn't as it's a perfectly valid character for an email address, but you know...devs.

shakestheclown 8y ago

I used to use the + system but ran into too many issues of it not being accepted and it seems some are smart enough to strip off the + and everything after. I moved to wildcard forwarder on my own domain so that *@mydomain.com get forwarded to my main email account. This gives me all the tracking I want and I can ban addresses if needed. That still gets me the zero overhead and practically infinite addresses with none of the downsides of gmail--and I can easily change my main email account as an added bonus.