Vary Your Gmail Address

Did you know you can change your Gmail address? Well, to an extent at least. Here’s how it works:

You can put any number of periods in the first part of your email address (everything before @gmail.com or @berklee.edu) and a message sent to that email will still get to you. For example, if I send a message to:

ma.rc.us.ba.ga.la@gmail.com  OR  marcus.bagala@gmail.com 


It’ll still be sent to marcusbagala@gmail.com. Another way you can change your address is by typing a plus sign (+) followed by any combination of letters and/or numbers (no spaces though). So if I send a message to:

marcusbagala+thegreatestcomposereveralive@gmail.com


OR

m.a.r.c.u.s.b.a.g.a.l.a+oBn0xIoUsEmAiL12345678@gmail.com

It’ll still be sent to marcusbagala@gmail.com. But when would you ever want to use this? Well let’s say you need to create an account on some website, but you don’t really want to sign up using your real address because you’re afraid you’ll start receiving 47 emails regarding “Natural Male Enhancement” a day. If you change your email up a bit, you’ll be able to see exactly which websites are using or misusing your email.

For example, if you only use the email j.smith+poundcake44@gmail.com on PoundCakeRecipes.com and all of a sudden you start getting spam sent to that email then you can assume that something is up with that site.  The good part, though, is that you can very easily create a filter in Gmail to automatically delete all messages sent to your “fake” email. This way, you no longer have to worry about receiving spam and your real email address is more secure.

-by LC Tech Blog contributor Michal Skrzypek