Gathered from reading Jan. 2006 Smart Computing.
Gmail's "fuzzy addressing" feature can help you organize your emails and defeat Spam at the same time.
For example, Gmail ignores the fine details of the name in an email address. If my address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com, it can be written firstnamelast.name@gmail.com, or first.namelastname@gmail.com or FirstName.LastName@gmail.com, or FirstnameLast.name@gmail.com and it will all get to me just fine. This is an example of "fuzzy addressing," which Gmail accepts.
This becomes more useful in the case of the "+" sign (plus sign). Gmail will ignore everything after the plus sign in an address. Thus firstname.lastname+otherinformation@gmail.com is seen by Gmail as firstname.lastname@gmail.com - BUT - this is the "big but" - the email will show up in your inbox with the +otherinformation in the address line.
This can be very useful, as the Smart Computing article points out, for such things as filtering messages by content type. Let's say you're working on a series of projects. You can supply co-workers project specific addresses (such as firstname.lastname+projectname@gmail.com) which would then allow you to group all "projectname" emails together.
The feature also has spam-protection properties. The article suggests using the plus sign feature when shopping online, or signing up for user status on websites. This will allow you to create that "short term" email address we've discussed before, and has the added benefit of allowing you to see clearly which shopping/signup experience is generating the spam. Let's say you buy a widget from Widget Central. You purchase the widget as first.last+WidgetCentral@gmail.com. A couple of weeks later, you start getting spammed at that addresss. Now you know Widget Central spams (or sells mail lists).
Gmail's "fuzzy addressing" feature can help you organize your emails and defeat Spam at the same time.
For example, Gmail ignores the fine details of the name in an email address. If my address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com, it can be written firstnamelast.name@gmail.com, or first.namelastname@gmail.com or FirstName.LastName@gmail.com, or FirstnameLast.name@gmail.com and it will all get to me just fine. This is an example of "fuzzy addressing," which Gmail accepts.
This becomes more useful in the case of the "+" sign (plus sign). Gmail will ignore everything after the plus sign in an address. Thus firstname.lastname+otherinformation@gmail.com is seen by Gmail as firstname.lastname@gmail.com - BUT - this is the "big but" - the email will show up in your inbox with the +otherinformation in the address line.
This can be very useful, as the Smart Computing article points out, for such things as filtering messages by content type. Let's say you're working on a series of projects. You can supply co-workers project specific addresses (such as firstname.lastname+projectname@gmail.com) which would then allow you to group all "projectname" emails together.
The feature also has spam-protection properties. The article suggests using the plus sign feature when shopping online, or signing up for user status on websites. This will allow you to create that "short term" email address we've discussed before, and has the added benefit of allowing you to see clearly which shopping/signup experience is generating the spam. Let's say you buy a widget from Widget Central. You purchase the widget as first.last+WidgetCentral@gmail.com. A couple of weeks later, you start getting spammed at that addresss. Now you know Widget Central spams (or sells mail lists).
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