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A Gmail address can have "."s added anywhere in the part before the @ and the resulting emails will still come to your inbox. You can then filter things directl
by LatteLazy 4y ago
A Gmail address can have "."s added anywhere in the part before the @ and the resulting emails will still come to your inbox. You can then filter things directly to spam with a simple rule.
Similarly you can add +<string> (eg John+Walmart@gmail.com). Then filter things to specific folders. Better still you can see who is selling your email when you start getting emails to that address. Some places don't permit + symbols in emails though...
- playingalong 4y agoBoth of these are well known features. And you can "normalize" a Gmail email address - basically stripping your defences.
- LatteLazy 4y agoYes and no. First that assumes someone is bothering. Plenty of places don't, as my spam collection shows. It always amazes me how little technical know-how or design goes into high cost solutions. And second: just reverse the logic: emails to john.doe@gmail.com are whitelisted. All others go to spam. So even if someone is "normalising" it actually works for Mr Doe... I hope this helps!
- zinekeller 4y agoThe ad industry did bother enough: https://github.com/IABTechLab/uid2docs/blob/main/api/README.md#email-address-normalization https://github.com/IABTechLab/uid2docs/blob/main/api/README.... It even reached HN frontpage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34400024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34400024
- everybodyknows 4y agoWith Fastmail, same effect by different means: Email aliases. Web UX is a bit rough, however.
- evulhotdog 4y agoI’ve been using Fastmail for about 6 months or so, and while I agree it’s a bit different than other providers, it works as intended and gets the job done. It’s actually one of the cleaner and faster (ha) webmail’s I’ve used. I definitely wouldn’t say that it’s rough, though.