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Originally Posted by PeterT
Try this
Quote:
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Let's say you need to sign up for a mailing list that interests you, but you're afraid spammers might get your address. We'll call the list "exoticflowers". Sign up with the list using the address "johndoe+exoticflowers@gmail.com". Email to that address will still come to your "johndoe@gmail.com" address even though the "To:" will include that "+exoticflowers" in it.
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Just to make it clear, the periods and the "+whatever" are two different features of Gmail.
Gmail basically ignores periods in the first part of an email address (before the @ sign). Email sent to
Code:
username@gmail.com
user.name@gmail.com
u.sername@gmail.com
u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com
are all delivered to
username@gmail.com .
Gmail also supports address tags (aka sub-addressing or "disposable" email addresses) using a + (plus sign). Other email services such as Yahoo, Outlook.com (Hotmail) and Apple also support address tags with either the + (plus) or - (hyphen).
So depending on the email system used, mail sent to
Code:
joeuser+work@example.com
or
joeuser-family@example.com
is delivered to
joeuser@example.com .
See this Wikipedia article for more information and links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Address_tags
Address tags are useful for filtering your email, automatically sorting incoming email into folders, etc. They are also different from email aliases, but there is some overlap between all three features.