Gmail Disposable E-mail Addresses

A friend of mine just sent me a link to this article about how you can take advantage of a feature of Gmail to create your own disposable e-mail addresses with your Gmail address.

If you have a Gmail address you can use ” . “’s and ” + “’s to make temporary e-mail addresses to give to others.

The examples shared in this article include:

1. One email for every purpose

Instead of using different email addresses for various purposes (work, school, friends, etc.) you can use different variations of your Gmail and filter incoming mails by ’sent to’ address. For instance, all incoming mail sent to ‘Name.Surname@gmail.com’ can be put to folder ‘work’, messages sent to ‘NameSurname@gmail.com’ can be put to ‘friends’, ‘N.ameSurname@gmail.com’ can be used for newsletters, and so on.

2. Track/Block spammers

When signing up for some website, say thatwebsite.com, you can add thatwebsite to your Gmail user ID (eg. GeorgeBush+thatwebsite@gmail.com). This way you can block your subscription whenever you want and even identify those websites that distribute your email address to spammers.

I was familiar with the method of using +’s to make temporary addresses, but didn’t realize you could take advantage of .’s the same way.

Source: 1 Awesome Gmail tip You Don’t Know about. Seriously. | MakeUseOf.com

If you use Microsoft Outlook as your e-mail client, you may be interested in this recent post of mine over at Microsoft Weblog.