Gmail rocks.

Today, I discovered another reason to add to its rockability factor. Gmail users essentially have unlimited email addresses (via Lifehacker) as Modern Day Alchemist points out.

(Pardon me if you know this already.)

The feature is called plus-addressing. Let’s say your email address is: me@gmail.com

With a plus sign after the user ID, you can get an infinite number of addresses. For example:

me+office@gmail.com,
me+heritagemailinglist@gmail.com,
me+straitstimessubscription@gmail.com and so on.

The benefits and applications?

Every time you are required to divulge your email address, you can give it a unique address. This enables you to filter the email (assigning labels automatically, for example), and more importantly, to determine who is spamming you.

Illustration: If you sign up to Spam Company updates using me+spamcompany@gmail.com, you should only receive emails from Spam Company with that email address. If it is being used to send stuff from another source, you’ll know that Spam Company sold/divulged your email address to third parties. This might be contrary to their privacy policy.

So, now that you know who’s the culprit, you can take action and filter unsolicited mail from this unique address straight to Trash.

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