John’s Tips 2024W4 — Use plus (+) addressing to get unlimited email addresses

So this one has been around for a while, but last week I found out a slight variation that may be helpful to folks.

In short, when you add a + to your gmail address before the @ symbol, anything after the + is ignored and gmail will send the mail to your regular mailbox.

So, if your email is johndoe@gmail.com, you can use a + and whatever text you want, and the mail will all still go to the same johndoe mailbox.

johndoe+123@gmail.com
johndoe+netflix@gmail.com
johndoe+testaccount@gmail.com

This is a super useful tool for many reasons, with my favourite reasons being:

- Creating test accounts for testing software, while using the one mailbox
- Signing up for subscriptions that require a new email address each time
- putting the name of the website after the + to see what websites sell your email address to spam companies (the spam mail will contain the address after the +)
- Setting up filtering rules based on what is after the +

As far as I am aware, this is possible for gmail, outlook and MS exchange mailboxes, but on MS exchange, your admin may have it disabled.

The second part, which I just learned, is that any number of full stops can also be added to your gmail address, and they will simply be ignored. So, the following emails will still get routed to johndoe@gmail.com

joh.n.d.oe@gmail.com
john.doe@gmail.com
john.doe+12.3@gmail.com

For my past tips check out my past stories.