Ingenious email tip: One account, infinite email addresses!
Do you feel your stomach churn every single time you enter your favorite e-mail address at a coronavirus test center or trying to login to one of your Internet-based accounts? Here is one particular trick that you might want to master: to create many email addresses with your email program. In our latest coffee break edition, I'll share with you this master tip that a service representative shared with me the other day. Best of all is, it is free, and you do not have to subscribe to a service like LastPass or its ilk.
TL;DR
- Email trick allows you to create more email addresses without having to apply for new accounts.
- Just add "+XYZ" in front of the @-sign of your mail address.
- It is probably not possible with all providers, but Gmail is one of them.
In our latest edition of coffee break, I would like to share a trick with you that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with smartphones. A service employee made me look pretty stupid the other day when he revealed this simple trick to me as a technology journalist. In order to book two tickets, it was necessary to create two e-mail addresses, and that ended up being easier than I thought!
The savior advised me to simply include "+XYZ" in front of the @ sign of my e-mail address. Once done, the email will arrive in my mailbox despite having a different address. Here are some examples to help you get started:
- Regular email address: maxmustermann@googlemail.com
- Email address with the addition: maxmustermann+ben@googlemail.com
My colleague Rubens Eishima told me in the editorial meeting yesterday that this trick probably does not work with every email service provider. I use Gmail for both private and professional matters, and I dare say that the entire mechanism works smoothly. Feel free to share with me in the comments whether the trick worked for you.
Exciting examples thanks to mail filters
Yesterday, my other teammate Stefan Moellenhoff suggested another possible example that is really clever. Email programs and also the online Gmail suite allow you to create intelligent filters. Certain keywords in the subject line or specified email addresses are thereby automatically moved to the spam folder or to any folder, or tagged with a term.
In other words, you can use your own email address to filter other emails. For example, if you always enter "+covid" for coronavirus test centers or always subscribe to newsletters with "+news", you can easily filter the different mail sources in your email program. Of course, you can also set up a spam address in the blink of an eye!
Foundation, The Morning Show and more!
Did you already know about this possibility of creating additional email addresses? Let me know in the comments!
This trick also works with Hotmail/Outlook accounts (I've been using it for years in both Gmail and Hotmail), at the time of last testing it didn't work in Yahoo though and I've not tested it in the lesser known services.