I know that Google’s Gmail service has a spam filtering system, but a friend of mine was also telling me that you can use a “plus notation” to compartmentalize incoming spam too? Do you know what he’s talking about?
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!
Plus notation has been around for years. Google has finally got around to implementing the standard correctly.
Marvin, I’m pretty sure that the way Gmail identifies spam is if a group of people flag it, not just one. Why can’t you just unsubscribe from the MacMall mailings? In my dealings with them I have found them to be a legit and upstanding company, not a spammer. ??
I have repeatedly identified MacMall ads to Gmail as spam but Gmail continues to gaily pass new instances into my inbox. Is Google in league with certain spammers? Or is there some other way to effectively get Gmail to dump spam other than the one consistent with the intuitively obvious technique of identifying it as such?
Just a note that Google didn’t come up with the idea, and it’s been around for years with different e-mail server packages.
That said, I have been doing exactly what you mention, with adding “+sitename” on many website signup pages, for years. Unfortunately, many websites refuse to accept a plus-sign in an e-mail address.
Instead of dealing with filters, I just get a new gmail account with an identifiable name and forward it to my main gmail box (delete the mail after forwarding in settings) then if I get spam, I can delete the account and let it bounce.
One of my mom’s friends has done something similar with snail mail since the pre-Internet days. Every subscription she buys is not sent to her real name, but to a variation of the magazine’s name. More clearly: Jane Doe subscribes to Sports Illustrated for hubby’s xmas present, but every month it comes addressed to S.I. Doe. Good Housekeeping would come to G.H. Doe, and so on. It’s made it possible for them to see patterns in their junk mail and react accordingly. I always thought it was a stroke of genius, and I’m glad Gmail makes it possible to continue the tradition.
Cool feature!