How can I use Google Gmail to manage spam?

What your friend is referencing has got to be one of the coolest features of Gmail, actually, though I haven't seen much written about it. Where I see it used is in the return email addresses of comments left on this weblog: one person out of about a hundred seems to know the trick.

And the trick is?

That when you have a Google Gmail address, you can add the additional notation +something and it'll still be routed to your mailbox, but will give you trackability.

For example, my Gmail address is d1taylor@gmail.com. That's easy, and when I sign up for different services online, join mailing lists, and add comments to weblogs, I can easily use that address and all works well.

But let's say that I want to leave a comment on my friend Jim's weblog, and I have a sneaking suspicion that he's harvesting those email addresses and selling them to a spammer. But I still want to have a valid email address so people can get in touch with me, I just want to have some way to differentiate between people who email me from that site's information. Let's further assume his site is called videomadness (I'm making this up, but there's probably a site with that name. The coincidence is purely unintentional).

Here's how the plus notation can help. Instead of using my standard Gmail address, I can instead use

d1taylor+videomadness@gmail.com

It shows up in my mailbox just as any other email would, but now I can work backwards if I start getting spam to that address and I can use a Gmail filter to automatically route future mail with that destination address directly into the trash (you can see this article for more information about how to set up Google Gmail filters: how to use Gmail filters).

The more you think about the applications of this capability, the more you realize that it's a very cool addition to Gmail and one well worth using as your address spreads throughout the Web, even on sites that you know are trustworthy and reputable. The ability to automatically tag and filter any messages that match that destination address makes it a cornerstone of a good email management system!