While trying to figure if there is a way to create aliases for Gmail email accounts I found two interesting features.
First, Gmail supports email address extensions, you can add any string after your username, connected with a '+' and messages sent to this address will end up in your mailbox. For example, if your address is first.last@gmail.com then this will also work: first.last+chat@gmail.com. Basically the '+' and everything following it gets stripped off in order to figure the real mailbox.
Second, the dots in the username are cosmetic, Gmail strips all the dots in order to find a unique mailbox. So first.last@gmail.com is the same as firstlast@gmail.com or f.i.r.s.t.l.a.s.t@gmail.com.
So what are these features good for? Probably they will not protect you from spam. Smart spammers should know about this and they will also strip dots and extensions.
The only real use I can imagine is filtering. You can filter incoming messages based on a modified email, so use one of them when you want to receive important notifications and there are no other good (or simple) ways to filter those messages. For example, whenever you subscribe to a mailing list use first.last+list@gmail.com then filter on this address to label messages as "List" and archive them automatically (so they don't show up in your Inbox).
Getting back to aliases, Gmail does not support them. But you can create another account and configure it to forward all emails to your main Gmail account. For all intents and purposes this will act as an alias.
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2 comments
i personally haven't confirmed it, but I heard you could also put the dot anywhere in the user part. for example
first.last @ .. = firstlast@... = f.irstlast@....
should try it later...
wow, that's cool :)
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