4 ms·
Although not a direct answer to the question, with gmail you can add a unique identifying suffix/tag after a + in the name part of your email: eg: first.last+w
by kbouck 7y ago
Although not a direct answer to the question, with gmail you can add a unique identifying suffix/tag after a + in the name part of your email:
eg: first.last+walgreens@gmail.com
And emails to that address still wind up in your inbox.
This can help to identify which source ultimately divulged your email to a spammer (intentionally or otherwise).
While it would be trivial for spammers to strip this tag off, i've found numerous instances of spam eventually being sent to the unique email I only ever used at eg. the sporting goods store.
- 0-_-0 7y agoYou can also add dots into random places, which can't be stripped automatically. So you can have the email as.dfg.h@gmail.com as your "official" email, and put random dots when you sign up for something. E.g. a.sd.fgh@gmail.com. Now you can filter out email sent to a.sd.fgh@gmail.com, or to any email that's not as.dfg.h@gmail.com. The spammers won't be able to discover your original address.
- heavenlyblue 7y agoThey’ll probably just spam the non-dotted address.
- kadoban 7y agoThat would require a person looking, or specific code written to handle this case, and knowing where it will and won't break the address. I also can also confirm that even more obvious schemes are not stripped by spammers, from personal experience.
- 0-_-0 7y agoYou can filter all mail coming to the non dotted address because you never gave that address to anyone.
- yitchelle 7y agoSome sites are getting a bit smarter and flagging these as non-valid email addresses.
- tracker1 7y agoThey're valid... the problem is that most sites don't bother escaping the "+" properly for validation of GET based requests, and the other side converts it to a space. There's a LOT to a valid email address than most systems allow. That said, register a domain on google domains, and it includes free mail forwarding... then you can use ANYTHING@yourdomain and just filter on the other side if an address gets abused/leaked. This way you can use a unique address for everything and check as needed. Could go a step further, but don't as a lot of mail is one-way marketing crap anyway.
- yitchelle 7y agoI know that they are valid, but my paranoid mind forces me to believe that those websites are invalidating the email addresses on purpose. This is so they can get the true email addresses.
- tracker1 7y agoI think it's probably a mix. In the end, it's easy enough to know about the + addressing google and other services use. Also, getting a list of disposable mail hosts, or otherwise having analytical data on the mail host, servers, etc. Disclosure: I worked for a company that did usage scoring of email addresses as well as others for managing email marketing etc, my opinions are my own.
- thenewnewguy 7y agoThis trick seems to be so well known I'm surprised that spammers aren't just stripping the prefix off of gmail email addresses.