3 ms·

Completely agree - have you encountered this before? The Gmail plus sign alias trick has been widely known for a long time and, to my knowledge, still works wel

Completely agree - have you encountered this before? The Gmail plus sign alias trick has been widely known for a long time and, to my knowledge, still works well today. It would be easy enough for websites to either block + in gmail addresses or instead grab the true email.

SXX 4mo ago
Gmail also have "googlemail.com" alias and you can split your username with dots since they dont count like "user@gmail.com" and "u.s.e.r@gmail.com" are the same thing, Nothing of it solves privacy though.
cloudfudge 4mo ago
Some sites that block "+" in email addresses are actually just doing it out of incompetence. My credit union, for example, will actually accept an address with a "+" in it, but nothing will work because some broken bit of web 1.0 plumbing along the way converted it to a space (it shows up that way on my profile page). I wouldn't be surprised to see "&nbsp" on my printed bank statements.
- janc_ 4mo ago
  Oh yes, so many websites are incompetent like that. And of course after registering with foo+bar@example.com they will happily send invoices to bar@example.com
autoexec 4mo ago
Spammers know to just cut out the +whatever. It's a simple regex to keep those from even getting into a database.
- janc_ 4mo ago
  The + has no special meaning in the standards, and thus removing it will just result in invalid addresses in many cases…
  - AlexandrB 4mo ago
    Doesn't matter. Most email services[1] use it the way Gmail does and spam is a numbers game. Losing a few valid addresses is worth correlating all those other addresses for most spammers. Standards only matter to nerds like us. [1] https://proton.me/blog/what-is-email-alias#5 https://proton.me/blog/what-is-email-alias#5
    - Ferret7446 4mo ago
      Except plus address users are also less likely to be receptive to spam, so it's probably better to just not bother
      - inigyou 4mo ago
        Spam has never been about how "receptive" the recipient is.
  - inigyou 4mo ago
    They can check if it's Gmail though.
ciupicri 4mo ago
Guess what? There are some dumb website or applications complaining that the email address is invalid.

SXX 4mo ago

Gmail also have "googlemail.com" alias and you can split your username with dots since they dont count like "user@gmail.com" and "u.s.e.r@gmail.com" are the same thing, Nothing of it solves privacy though.

cloudfudge 4mo ago

Some sites that block "+" in email addresses are actually just doing it out of incompetence. My credit union, for example, will actually accept an address with a "+" in it, but nothing will work because some broken bit of web 1.0 plumbing along the way converted it to a space (it shows up that way on my profile page). I wouldn't be surprised to see "&nbsp" on my printed bank statements.

janc_ 4mo ago
Oh yes, so many websites are incompetent like that. And of course after registering with foo+bar@example.com they will happily send invoices to bar@example.com

autoexec 4mo ago

Spammers know to just cut out the +whatever. It's a simple regex to keep those from even getting into a database.

janc_ 4mo ago
The + has no special meaning in the standards, and thus removing it will just result in invalid addresses in many cases…
- AlexandrB 4mo ago
  Doesn't matter. Most email services[1] use it the way Gmail does and spam is a numbers game. Losing a few valid addresses is worth correlating all those other addresses for most spammers. Standards only matter to nerds like us. [1] https://proton.me/blog/what-is-email-alias#5 https://proton.me/blog/what-is-email-alias#5
  - Ferret7446 4mo ago
    Except plus address users are also less likely to be receptive to spam, so it's probably better to just not bother
    - inigyou 4mo ago
      Spam has never been about how "receptive" the recipient is.
- inigyou 4mo ago
  They can check if it's Gmail though.

ciupicri 4mo ago

Guess what? There are some dumb website or applications complaining that the email address is invalid.