21–30 of 34 posts
If you run your own mail server, this whole process is much easier. Just set up an alias name specific to whoever you're giving the address to; then forward it to your real email. If spam starts, you just delete the alias.
I use the user+company@gmail.com alias when I can but MANY websites don't support that as a valid email address. Even tech companies that should know better.
You can rearrange the dots in your username to create variations. err.or54 e.rror54 er.ro.r.54 then you can filter the variation to a less frequently checked folder.
The main reason I quit doing this is because Gmail's spam filtering kept spam out of my inbox and I never cared if one of those aliases were "compromised" and it wasn't worth the effort. I guess it was a solution to a problem I never had.
I still use a spam@example.com for those sites that I may need to provide an email address and I don't want to give them my real address, such as forums that make you sign in to see an answer.
This way there's no need for the +alias in the user part, and some site tend to block this because they know it's used for aliases.
Doing this, I know exactly where this email was used. Been doing this for years, and works great.
I have my domains hooked up with google apps (there was a time when it was free, still is if you got in early), and they allow you to have a catch-all for email addresses that you can redirect to one of your user accounts. So each time I need an email for a site, I just put @some_domain.com. This way there's no need for the +alias in the user part, and some site tend to block this because they know it's used for alia…
My mail server (running qmail) uses - for this. Have been doing this trick for at least a decade now with it. I've never had a site complain about it.
If you run your own mail server, this whole process is much easier. Just set up an alias name specific to whoever you're giving the address to; then forward it to your real email. If spam starts, you just delete the alias.
It's also fun to use aliases specific to which source it is being provided. You eventually get some surprises about the integrity of some sites when you start receiving a spam on an alias only used for that site, revealing that your information was sold or stolen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They _do_ know better (i.e. they know you use it for filtering) and that's why they don't accept it. I don't like it either, but it's a reasonable choice for them to make.
I completely disagree! This is not a reasonable choice. Email forms must confirm to the RFC standards or else there is no standard. The biggest offender I've run into is Yahoo. Yahoo's email address filtering won't allow me to use my email address because they reject my TLD. Even lousier, their technical support form also rejects my email address, so I can't even send them email to have them correct the problem.
However, if I'm offering a service and collecting email addresses as part of that service, my mail form could do additional validation (e.g. I might not want to collect email addresses from the UK (.co.uk) or from .edu or from people with 'john' in their email address.
I'm not violating an RFC with my email form, which may provide some benefit (e.g. stop fake email addresses, reject customers I don't care about) at the expense of losing/angering some other customers. That's a business question, not a standards issue.
(BTW - I've never restricted email addresses on a form in this way, but can empathise with those who do)