Customizing email address in Google Mail
Did you know that all mail sent to username+anything@gmail.com will be delivered to username@gmail.com? I've started to use this to help with transitioning the contact email on some of my online accounts from my old nyx.net address to my gmail address. For example I changed my netflix address to myname+netflix@gmail.com.
This makes it very easy to filter out notifications from Netflix so that they go directly into the Netflix folder (err tag) and skip the inbox. I think there are a couple of drawbacks, though.
The first issue doesn't take away from the main function of the +anything (ease of filtering) but a supposed secondary feature, which is as a spam fighting tool. For example, if Netflix sold my email address to a spammer, it would be easy to see this (in theory) because all of the spam would be sent to my +netflix address. I'm very skeptical of this claim, however, because spammers are so sophisticated at circumventing anti-spam technology -- how difficult is it to drop everything between the + and the @ from my address? So I think it has very little value as a spam detection technique. Plus, as far as I can tell the spam filter on gmail is superb by iteslf.
The other issue has to do with all social-network sites, which is that the most reliable way to find your friends is to search by their email address. (For the record, I don't do this -- I don't feel comfortable giving out anyone's email address without their approval. Furthermore the new trend of automatically searching your contact list is such a bad idea.) But anyway, if someone tries to search Netflix for myname@gmail.com, then obviously they won't find me unless the Netflix search engine is smart like the spammers.
This makes it very easy to filter out notifications from Netflix so that they go directly into the Netflix folder (err tag) and skip the inbox. I think there are a couple of drawbacks, though.
The first issue doesn't take away from the main function of the +anything (ease of filtering) but a supposed secondary feature, which is as a spam fighting tool. For example, if Netflix sold my email address to a spammer, it would be easy to see this (in theory) because all of the spam would be sent to my +netflix address. I'm very skeptical of this claim, however, because spammers are so sophisticated at circumventing anti-spam technology -- how difficult is it to drop everything between the + and the @ from my address? So I think it has very little value as a spam detection technique. Plus, as far as I can tell the spam filter on gmail is superb by iteslf.
The other issue has to do with all social-network sites, which is that the most reliable way to find your friends is to search by their email address. (For the record, I don't do this -- I don't feel comfortable giving out anyone's email address without their approval. Furthermore the new trend of automatically searching your contact list is such a bad idea.) But anyway, if someone tries to search Netflix for myname@gmail.com, then obviously they won't find me unless the Netflix search engine is smart like the spammers.