Dave Winer posted to ask if anyone had a suggestion on how to quickly create new email addresses that can be forwarded to his main address. I wrote him with a suggestion and at the same time realized I’ve never posted the techniques1 here.
Gmail has a feature where you can add a + to the end of your email address and create a new address that goes to your original address. For example, jeff.milner+newaddress@gmail.com will appear to the service you are signing up for as a different address than jeffmilner@gmail.com but they both go to my inbox.
The only downside is that some services see the + as being not a valid email address.
The other feature I want to highlight is that gmail ignores periods. Mail sent to jeffmilner@gmail.com or jeff.milner@gmail.com will both arrive in my inbox. Same with j.e.f.f.m.i.l.n.e.r@gmail.com. Gmail doesn’t care about the periods but each iteration is a different email address to the service you are signing up for.
- I first learned about these features in a Gmail Blog post from 2008.[↩]