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GMail Tip: Use A Plus Sign To Avoid Spam

This technique’s about a decade old, but a lot of people still aren’t using it, and I can’t help but suspect that can only be because they didn’t know about it yet, so let’s revisit:

You have a GMail account, right? Or else Google for Domains? Suppose your email address is dan@gmail.com… did you know that also means that you own:

  • dan+smith@gmail.com
  • dan+something@gmail.com
  • dan+anything-really@gmail.com
  • d.an@gmail.com
  • d..a..n@gmail.com

You have a practically infinite number of GMail addresses. Just put a plus sign (+) after your name but before the @-sign and then type anything you like there, and the email will still reach you. You can also insert as many full stops (.) as you like, anywhere in the first half of your email address, and they’ll still reach you, too. And that’s really, really useful.

Filling in an Equifax registration form.
Often, you end up having to give your email address to companies that you don’t necessarily trust…

When you’re asked to give your email address to a company, don’t give them your email address. Instead, give them a mutated form of your email address that will still work, but that identifies exactly who you gave it to. So for example you might give the email address dan+amazon@gmail.com to Amazon, the email address dan+twitter@gmail.com to Twitter, and the email address dan+pornhub@gmail.com to… that other website you have an account on.

Why is this a clever idea? Well, there are a few reasons:

  • If the company sells your email address to spammers, or hackers steal their database, you’ll know who to blame by the email address they’re sending to. I’ve actually caught out an organisation in this way who were illegally reselling their mailing lists to third parties.
  • If you start getting unwanted mail from somebody (whether because spammers got the email or because you don’t like what the company is sending to you), you can easily block them. Even if you can’t unsubscribe or just because they make it hard to do so, you can just set up a filter to automatically discard anything that comes to that email address in future.
  • If you feel like organising your life better, you can set up filters for that, too: it doesn’t matter what address a company sends from, so long as you know what address they’re sending to, so you can easily have filters that e.g. automatically forward copies of the mortgage statement that come to dan+yourbank@gmail.com to your spouse, or automatically label anything coming to
    dan+someshop@gmail.com with the label “Shopping”.
  • If you’re signing up just to get a freebie and you don’t trust them not to spam you afterwards, you don’t need to use a throwaway: just receive the goodies from them and them block them at the source.
The email address dan+equifax@gmail.com being entered into a form.
Certainly, you can have… THIS email address.

I know that some people get some of these benefits by maintaining a ‘throwaway’ email address. But it’s far more-convenient to use the email address you already have (you’re already logged-in to it and you use it every day)! And if you ever do want a true ‘throwaway’, you’re generally better using Mailinator: when you’re asked for your email address, just mash the keyboard and then put @mailinator.com on the end, to get e.g. dsif9tsnev4y8594es87n65y4@mailinator.com. Copy the first half of the email address to the clipboard, and then when you’re done signing up to whatever spammy service it is, just go to mailinator.com and paste into the box to see what they emailed you.

A handful of badly-configured websites won’t accept email addresses with plus signs in them, claiming that they’re invalid (they’re not). Personally, when I come across these I generally just inform the owner of the site of the bug and then take my business elsewhere; that’s how important it is to me to be able to filter my email properly! But another option is to exploit the fact that you can put as many dots in (the first part of) your GMail address as you like. So you could put d…an@gmail.com in and the email will still reach you, and you can later filter-out emails to that address. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide how to encode information about the service you’re signing up to into the pattern and number of dots that you use.

Go forth and avoid spam.

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Review of Bytemark

This review of Bytemark originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

Excellent Internet hosting services backed by knowledgeable customer service and “real people” you can talk to, all at great prices.

Review of Payphone

This review of Payphone originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

Not just a regular payphone, this is an iconic K2 kiosk almost exactly to Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s original 1924 design, and in fact the only example of such a thing in Oxford (although this particular one wasn’t originally from here): the other ‘red telephone boxes’ in Oxford are all of the latter, smaller K6 design. This particular phone box is a piece of architectural history!

Review of The Tuck Shop

This review of The Tuck Shop originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

Cheap drinks and sandwiches. Little space inside: becomes unnavigable when there’s a queue. Often run short or out of small denominations of coins (more often than you’d expect for a convenience store) and start accepting exact change only (although don’t expect to find that out until you reach the front of the queue).

Review of Oxford Print Centre

This review of Oxford Print Centre originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

A range of print services and reasonable prices, but somewhat disorganised: for my largest order, I was given a collection time and arrived only to find that they hadn’t yet started on it!

Review of Barclays ATM

This review of Barclays ATM originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

Three cash machines, although more often than not one is broken. Very often run out of £10 notes and often out of cash entirely or receipt paper. No sensible queuing space, so when there are queues they often send up on the road. A common target for card skimmer thieves: I’ve been caught out once here!

Review of Cardews of Oxford

This review of Cardews of Oxford originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

Spectacular selection of teas and coffees served by knowledgeable staff: if you’re looking for tea leaves or coffee beans, you can’t do better. Also sells various cookware, although sometimes a little pricey for what it is.

Review of St Aldate’s Post Office

This review of St Aldate's Post Office originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

This Post Office used to be plagued by long queues for its service desks. Now they’ve replaced half the service desks with a greater number of self-service machines, and yet it somehow seems to have even longer queues as a result. The new system is unfathomable (Do you need self service or not? If not, you need to take a ticket for which you first need to go to a different kind of self-service machine…) and so they’ve had to give somebody the job of standing at the entrance and trying to direct people to the right tool for them.

If you manage to accidentally get past this helper then you’ll find yourself lost, with no idea where you’re supposed to go or what you’re supposed to do.

Use a different post office or, better yet, do as much as you can online. For your sanity.

Review of Bonn Square

This review of Bonn Square originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

Named for Oxford’s twin city in Germany, Bonn, and that – and the war memorial that acts mostly as a seat among the undersupply of benches – is the only interesting this about this plaza. You can’t sit and eat here because you’ll be mobbed by pigeons. You can’t hold a quiet conversation here because of the foot traffic that ploughs through during daylight hours and the buses that growl by into Queen Street.

It’s just: an empty space that could desperately have enjoyed more love than went into giving it a couple of sad-looking trees. Nothing more, nothing less.

Review of Gloucester Green Market

This review of Gloucester Green Market originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

The weekday market offers the best multi-cuisine street food experience you’ll get almost anywhere: stalls as far as the eye can see serving Italian, Japanese, Indian, Goan, Ethiopian, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese… the list goes on. Take an explore and try something new on a Wednesday or Thursday soon.

The non-food stalls are a mixed-bag. If you know what you’re looking for, you might find it. If you don’t, you might find something anyway, but don’t hold your breath.

Review of Not Dogs

This review of Not Dogs originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

Veggie fast food done right! From the hippy attitude to the delicious and imaginative ‘dogs, this is my favourite vegetarian eatery anywhere.

Review of Alpha Bar

This review of Alpha Bar originally appeared on Google Maps. See more reviews by Dan.

Delicious salads made to order plus a mixture of different hot and cold foods served daily. Always includes a great vegetarian selection, so long as you get there before it sells out! Often incredibly long queues at lunchtime, and prices are a little high for what you get, but otherwise a great lunchtime venue.