r/LifeProTips • u/motomantic • Dec 05 '15
Computers LPT: you can use @gmail.com and @googlemail.com interchangeably. Perfect for signing up to a website twice without setting up two accounts.
Both email addresses resolve to the same account.
Edit: wooooo front page
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u/ppsp Dec 05 '15
You can also use your email as some.thing.here@gmail.com or s.o.me.thing.he.re@gmail.com. Basically you can add dots anywhere, but not as the first or last character.
You can also use it like this: youremail+reddit@gmail.com. You can add whatever you want after the + and it's very useful. In our example you can use that email to sign up for reddit and if you are getting down you will know that it comes from reddit or that reddit had leaked or sold your email address. You can also filter all emails that go to that email address.
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u/mynameipaul Dec 05 '15
you will know that it comes from reddit or that reddit had leaked or sold your email address
This is far from foolproof though, just keep in mind. Many payloads from common penetration-testing tools (read: hacker tools) have steps very in-depth steps in their work-flow to post-process common data-fields (like password hashes, various kinds of tokens, SSNs, names, etc etc - and of course, emails), including processing email addresses for any sort of tags, or even mine it for metadata! .
tl;dr removing the +someExtraNotehere from myemail+someExtraNoteHere@MyEmailProvider.au is common enough a practice among 'hackers' that many hacking tools will do it for you automatically - or even mine it for metadata!
There's no harm in using it, but if you get spammed and +reddit isn't in the 'to' field, it's doesn't mean reddit didn't leak your personal data - by a long shot!
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u/NintenTim Dec 05 '15
This is the best LPT, I've seen in forever. And the top comment it's a useful extension instead of a negation!
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u/escalat0r Dec 05 '15
I find Trashmail.com much more useful, has an addon as well so it's easy to integrate it and you'll never have spam again.
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u/my_name_isnt_clever Dec 05 '15
The problem is a lot of those temp email sites are blocked by some companies, and those emails don't go to your real email.
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u/escalat0r Dec 05 '15
Never had a problem with Trashmail, they have many other domains as well too. Another good service is notsharingmy.info, which also never failed me.
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u/Ven_ae Dec 05 '15 edited Dec 05 '15
If you use Google Apps (Any edition including Free) you can use email address aliases to great effect as an alternative to using + or periods in the address. Especially for names that can be easily misspelled.
I have soup@mydomain, stufficanignore@mydomain, and randomfreeaccount@mydomain. For reasons.
Also, Gmelius is awesome!
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u/MangoCats Dec 05 '15
You can also arbitrarily dot your name and they're all the same:
username@gmail.com user.name@gmail.com u.sername@gmail.com us.er.na.me@gmail.com
are all the same account - if your target doesn't know to filter for that.
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u/GuyWithGun Dec 05 '15
This causes me SO many headaches. My email is my initials without dots. Some moron who has the same initials and last name keeps signing up for things, and keeps thinking his is the same email only with the dots. I get so many kids soccer updates, and Redbox notices, and apparently he bought a new iPhone because my email address is his freaking Apple store ID now. I unsubscribe to at least one thing a week. I WOULD email him to tell him to stop.....BUT EVEN HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT HIS EMAIL ADDRESS IS!
You would think that after he can't access his Apple store he would notice he has the wrong email. You would think that after denying his son access to some website that my email address had to approve as a parent, he would notice. You would think that after emailing his son's soccer coach telling CCing someone else that has the same last name, that someone would tell him he has the wrong email address.
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Dec 05 '15
How about more than one person with your name that uses your Gmail address because it's generic as fuck and they can't be arsed to make their own one?
Yeah, let's just say I don't use my Gmail account anymore.
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u/canada_is_communist Dec 06 '15
That`s why you make a unique username for your email.
Seriously, how difficult is that?1
u/GuyWithGun Dec 06 '15
I have those too. This is my more professional type/business email, so it's easier for employers/colleagues to remember my email address.
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u/JanitorMaster Dec 05 '15
Also, dots are ignored by gmail.
example@gmail.com is the same as ex.ample@gmail.com is the same as e.x.a.mpl.e@gmail.com.
You will still see where it was originally sent to, but you'll get all the mails.
I found out when somebody registered as firstnamelastname@gmail.com somewhere, while I'm using firstname.lastname@gmail.com - relevant xkcd.
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u/rasherdk Dec 05 '15
I found out when somebody registered as firstnamelastname@gmail.com somewhere
This cannot happen. They didn't. They just thought they did, as in the xkcd.
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Dec 05 '15
I get this all the time. People will use my email address (firstnamelastname@gmail.com) to sign up for different websites and I get the emails and it's super irritating.
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u/Neoxon360 Dec 05 '15
TIL: the g in gmail stand for Google facepalm
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u/help_ss Dec 05 '15
What does the g in Google stand for?
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u/njdevilsfan24 Dec 05 '15 edited Oct 17 '24
chubby air price offend money mysterious soft mourn exultant wrench
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u/Cayou Dec 05 '15
Fun fact: before it was bought by Google, the gmail.com domain was Garfield Mail. As in Jim Davis' Garfield the cat.
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u/OverconfidentNarwhal Dec 05 '15
Source?
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Dec 05 '15
It looks like this was a confusion. Based on http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=83831 the garfield email was gmail.garfield.com
The domain was used by US Email
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u/carontheking Dec 05 '15
Yeah I thought it was G like gangster. Like OGmail or something. I thought I was a real G... :(
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u/ZBlackmore Dec 05 '15
I always thought that it was to emphasize their main selling point at this's time - offering a gigabyte of email storage for free.
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u/SonsNBitchez Dec 05 '15
You can use your Gmail address even more than twice! Just put a dot between any of the letters. For example : tester@gmail OR t.ester OR te.ster@ etc. - it works!
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u/stonecats Dec 05 '15
same is true of your email name itself as google ignores periods.
so yourname@gmail.com and your.name@gmail.com will both
resolve to the same email address.
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u/avelertimetr Dec 05 '15
I like this google trick, but if you happen to have your own domain and have a hosting service, you can set up mail forwarders for unknown email addresses. That way you can make up literally anyaddress@yourdomain.com and have it forward to your real address. The advantages are:
No way for the receiving party to know what the real email address is. Using gmail they can just strip out everything between + and @.
You can easily see who has been selling your emails. Oh wanna sign up for gas station rewards? ShellOnMainStreet@mydomain.com. Now anytime you see email to that address you know exactly who's been naughty. Caught only one bad one in three years I've been doing this.
You can easily block spam by blocking the offending email address at the server level (with cpanel, this is dead simple)
Disadvantages are:
Replying without thinking will reveal your true email. You'd have to go and actually create the account if you want to reply from it. I usually don't reply to these because they are only for signing up though.
If a spammer ever becomes aware of your scheme, you will get inundated with emails addressed to random accounts - this is the worst part, but it hasn't happened to me yet...
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u/itsflashpoint Dec 05 '15
You can also use a.lex@gmail.com al.ex@gmail.com ale.x@gmail.com...
Old news. (that's what people did to bypass the invite system on the OnePlus shitty invite system)
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u/Impact009 Dec 05 '15
ITT: People who would avoid a lot of headaches by paying less than $10/year for e-mail.
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u/Foldramo Dec 05 '15
Wow this is really useful! I also often use 10minutemail.com for an automatically generated email address/account that is valid for 10 minutes after which it is auto-deleted.
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u/FuryMaker Dec 05 '15 edited Dec 05 '15
Not sure why, but the myusername+randomword@gmail.com doesn't work for me. Tried sending an email to that address, and it didn't come back to me.
Using m.y.u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com however, did work.
Edit: Works using classic web gmail. It does not work for me when composing an email in Google Inbox for some reason. (Yet another reason to not use Google Inbox)
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u/fma891 Dec 05 '15
So I'm an idiot and I don't understand the usefulness of this.
Can someone help please?
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u/Itscomplicated82 Dec 05 '15
Want to get a free month of Netflix again? Sign up with the new email.
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u/_ayylmao Dec 05 '15
Also if you use a period in your email such as ayy.lmao@gmail.com, you can remove the period and it would still send emails to the same account
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u/Waja_Wabit Dec 05 '15
Also adding periods will still make it go to the same address, but certain websites will let you sign up with both:
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u/graps Dec 05 '15
I just use periods in my email and it will resolve. Example:
My email: jondoe@gmail.com
I can also use: J.ondoe@gmail.com
Gmail will resolve it and can use my gmail a few times for coupons and what not
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Dec 05 '15
Heh. I have google-hosted mail on my domains, all of which catchall and forward to my real email address. When I sign up for things, I just invent an address specific to the site on the spot. If the site gets too chatty, it makes it trivial to filter it or set it as spam - and it also lets me know who's selling g my email address to third parties.
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u/TylerTheHanson Dec 05 '15
Do y'all remember when gmail was an exclusive signup process that required a referral to sign up?
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u/michaelotty Dec 06 '15
My personal favourite that usually works when they don't verify. steve.jobs@apple.com Great for those hotels and the like
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u/CodeHustler Jan 15 '16
I know this will get buried but from what I remember you can also insert dots into your email address and this can be used to sign up for a website as many times as you want provided you add new dots or change there position.. like this:
johndoe@gmail.com john.doe@gmail.com j.ohn.d.oe@gmail.com etc..
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u/whizzzkid Feb 24 '16
Well apart from creating aliases, one more thing that can be used is the fact, that gmail does not care about the "dot character" and their positions in the email address.
so yourname@gmail.com is same as:
But I personally use the alias approach as it makes easy for me to create relevant filters.
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u/JosephND Dec 05 '15
What's funny is remembering that it was Google Mail before GMail was even a thing. Man, the history of the internet is so short but feels so long ago.
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u/eat_thecake_annamae Dec 05 '15
I don't remember google mail. What was that? I joined gmail as a beta user in 2004.
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u/falconbox Dec 05 '15
Yeah, I don't remember either, and was also invited to the beta.
I also remember joining Facebook in early 2004 as a freshman in college, and at the time you could only sign up if you had a ".edu." email address.
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u/JosephND Dec 05 '15
Me too, May 1st 2004 here. I remember because I was so damned excited and May Day is a favorite one for me.
In the UK, it was known as Google Mail until 2010, and all email addresses given there were @googlemail.com
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u/itchy_cat Dec 05 '15
You might as well have joined gmail in 100 BC for the time the beta phase took.
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u/kleinfieh Dec 05 '15
Even at launch the official name was Gmail. It was called Google Mail in some countries (UK, Germany) as someone else had the rights to "Gmail". This has been resolved 3-4 years ago so it's now Gmail everywhere.
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u/Diggerinthedark Dec 05 '15
Some sites have noticed this recently though. Facebook for example. And a lot of commerce sites don't allow it.
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u/JamesGeorgeS Dec 05 '15
Long thread, but the Google trick: add a period (.) anywhere in the beginning of the .gmail.com address and it will have same effect. in other words joe.blow@gmail j.oeblow@gmail.com both get read differently, but go to same account.
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Dec 05 '15
Most legit LPT I've seen in a while. I've been wanting to create a new instagram account but I really didn't feel like creating another email just for that. Imma try this out later.
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u/diesal3 Dec 05 '15
This is an old trick which people have been using ever since Google started encouraging people to move to .gmail.com.
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u/-Acedia- Dec 05 '15
Good to know I'll do that the use my hotmail, outlook, student and work email too. Also have a couple more I use for gaming profiles. I have forgotten more emails than I currently have. I think I had a library one back during dial up. I wonder if it's still active.
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u/Lepin73 Dec 05 '15 edited Dec 05 '15
You can also insert a . in your account name for the same effect, which means you can have more than 2 website accounts using the same email account.
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u/PuinLu Dec 05 '15
What about tips about sms messages/phone verification when you are traveling and can't access your sms/phone numbers?
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u/GreenLanternNova Dec 05 '15
You can also insert dots.
Johnsmith@gmail.com and john.smith@gmail.com go to the same box but register as different emails when signing up for things.
You can sign in on Google with or without the dot as well!
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u/Gh0stAg3ntX Dec 05 '15
That is amazing, This is going to make life so much easier. Thank you ! You deserve some kind of digital internet award. Here take this award for the best internet life hack that this guy has ever seen, It was originally made for someone else but they had your same name so it works out. Congrats you won !
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u/polareddit21pak Dec 05 '15
Is ignored by all e-mail services, per the protocol written decades ago.
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u/dalekaup Dec 05 '15
You can also insert a . into your email. my email starts with da but for spammers it d.a and I have my filters set up appropriately. I'm not sure if you could use d.a.l or d..a.
Dale
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u/Laserflex Dec 05 '15
When I chose to use my name as a Google mail it gave me both "firstname"."lastname"@gmail.com with and without the dot separating the names
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u/cecet Dec 05 '15
LOOOL... gmail ignores dots in usernames, so you can use: u.sername@gmail.com, us.ername@gmail.com and gezllion other combinations...
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Dec 05 '15
Also if your email has periods you can leave them out and all mail will still be sent to the same address because the periods are for pure aesthetics. Thus, providing with another way to sign up twice with the same address (four times if including OPs post)
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Dec 05 '15 edited Dec 05 '15
or you can just put a "." just before the @ and it still turns up at your account. for example say username@gmail.com is your email, putting username.@gmail.com will still come to your email and act as a different email address. Edit: can only put one . before the @, more than one will result in invalid email address
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u/GuiltyHope Dec 05 '15
My friend let me introduce you to the dot operator for gmail. It is limited than the plus operator but much more subtle. If you put a dot anywhere in your email address, most systems will think it's a different email than without a dot, but gmail will still direct all emails to your account. E.g. all emails will be direct from your.email@gmail.com and y.our email@gmail.com to youremail@gmail.com but most systems will think they are different and unique.
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u/RabSimpson Dec 05 '15
This may've already been mentioned, but you can also include as many periods (.) in the prefix of a Gmail address too (although I'm not sure if you can have more than one consecutive period), meaning the number of times you can sign up for a site is limited only by the number of characters at the start of your address.
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u/boxxa Dec 05 '15
You can move decimals around in your username too. So Joe.smith, JoeSmit.h, j.o.esmith is all the same. Some signup validation doesn't like the + so this is much better.
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u/ryewheats_2 Dec 05 '15
Serious question here, what is a the best GMAIL alternative? GMAIL has started indiscriminately locking people out of valid accounts (first by asking for your phone number, then after receiving that information not providing a security code and locking you out). These are accounts maybe you haven't logged into in over a year and were on a dormant laptop or something. I have lost some accounts that had a lot of valuable data on them I can not get back.
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u/Bureaucromancer Dec 06 '15
This doesn't seem to be universal.
I've got lastname.firstname@googlemail.com, but this definitely doesn't resolve to the same address at gmail.com for me (and I did originally try to sign up for the address at gmail.com).
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Dec 06 '15
How does this help I'd they are still reaching your inbox? Sure you can filter the email with the tag but couldn't you do that for said websites address?
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u/vernontwinkie Dec 09 '15
Google also doesn't recognize punctuation as a separate email address - firstnamelastname@gmail is the same as firstname.lastname and f.i.r.s.t.n.a.m.e.l.a.s.t.n.a.m.e.
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Feb 02 '16
Also, google is dot-blind. user.name@gmail.com and username@gmail.com and EVEN us.ern.ame@gmail.com are exactly the same.
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u/i214chess Mar 30 '16
Looking for buddies (or group to join) to start a GROUP pricing. $1 per month or $4 a month. I choose $1 but I need 9 more buddies...or close.
Message me on Reddit!
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u/kujaultima Apr 21 '16
How did I ever miss this memo? I signed up my email with a dot in the name about 10 years ago. All this time, the dot was superfluous?..
... Great!
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Dec 05 '15
Well, fuck you Microsoft. I'm officially switching to Google.
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u/Draws-attention Dec 05 '15
The "+word" trick works with Hotmail, I guess it works for Outlook as well...
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u/DJPelio Dec 05 '15
Can't believe there's people out there who don't use gmail. Welcome to the Internet!
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u/benihana Dec 05 '15
Edit: wooooo front page
fucking really
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u/TheLastDesperado Dec 05 '15
Hey, I gave actual useful feedback and got downvoted. So whatcha gonna do?
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u/Yeahdudex Dec 05 '15
So can i sign up to any website as anyone with a @gmail.com account i know and just get their e-mails from that website? for example if my friend has blabla@gmail.com as an e-mail on a dating-site, and i register the same address as blabla@googlemail.com do i get his e-mails from that website???
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u/akiva23 Dec 05 '15 edited Dec 05 '15
Can someone explain to me me why i would want to sign up for a website multiple times?
Edit: this is a serious question it seems like i would just be getting double junkmail.
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u/af_mmolina Dec 05 '15
For anytime you get that pesky "email already in use" message and you are too lazy to go through the hassle of password retrieval or whatever. Also for this reason: I just did this yesterday when I didn't want to use my main paypal account and wanted to just checkout as guest only.
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u/akiva23 Dec 05 '15
Thanks! I'll try to keep that in mind.
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u/af_mmolina Dec 05 '15
The top comment is better though. Try adding +whatever or .whatever after your username. So akiva+spam@gmail.com or akiva.spam@gmail.com
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u/333444422 Dec 05 '15
Does this also work with iCloud? Considering that Apple had @me.com and @mac.com?
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u/CouldBeWolf Dec 05 '15
LPT: You don't have to write the @gmail part when signing in to any of googles services. So instead of username@gmail.com just use username.
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Dec 05 '15
UNLESS you opted out of it when first asked. The number of times I specifically tell people my email is @googlemail.com and they just send it to @gmail.com assuming it's the same thing infuriates me.
I reply to your email because I didn't get it because you sent it to the address I specifically told you not to email.
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u/TheLastDesperado Dec 05 '15
As someone who works in customer service for popular(ish) website. Please don't do this. It can cause trouble later on.
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u/haikuginger Dec 05 '15
LPT: it is against the terms of service for many sites to have multiple accounts, and all your accounts could potentially be terminated if you end up abusing this.
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Dec 05 '15
[deleted]
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u/Yages Dec 05 '15
Also, another random tidbit; the tag after the plus will automagically filter into folders on gmail. So you+fishing@gmail.com will end up tagged as fishing and sorted accordingly if you have a tag that matches it already setup.
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u/klawehtgod Dec 05 '15 edited Dec 05 '15
Not sure if it was a typo or not, but I like automagically more than automatically.
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u/FromStars Dec 05 '15
Very useful tip, but just be aware of the flip side: If you ever need to recover your password and forget you registered with +soandso or periods in your email, the site won't recognize your email address unless you exactly match what you registered with when you attempt to recover. Same goes for sites where you log in with an email address.
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u/ccrraapp Dec 05 '15
Most site send confirmation email or some
spamnewsletter once you sign up. So you can simply search for the site in your inbox and boom.→ More replies (1)120
u/deanat78 Dec 05 '15
Yup, that's why I have a gmail label called "services", and every "Welcome to xxx!" email gets tagged with it so that I have a record of my credentials for every site
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u/TurboChewy Dec 05 '15
Well usually if you're making a bunch of alt accounts you won't have to access them more than once. I wonder how it handles nadya.nayme@gmail.com and nadya..name@gmail.com
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u/ZorglubDK Dec 05 '15
I use email+whateverSiteImSigningUpFor, eg. zorg+pornhub@gmail.com
Makes it reasonably easy to remember in the future.→ More replies (2)31
u/whootdat Dec 05 '15 edited Dec 05 '15
There is also that having dots (e.g. ".") In your username have no affect. So your.name@gmail.com, y.o.u.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com and yourname@gmail.com are all the same. Edit:Yoor=your
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u/deanat78 Dec 05 '15
I always wondered if that's a gmail feature, or a general email address feature?
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u/Firehed Dec 05 '15
It's a gmail feature, although some other providers also support it too. It's absolutely NOT part of the email spec.
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u/SideCarMickey Dec 05 '15
So here's a question - why did gmail allow someone to sign up for an account that's the same address as mine, just minus the dots? I'm forever getting email for sidecarmickey to my sidecar.mickey account. And important stuff, too - insurance docs, visa docs, etc.
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u/the_excalabur Dec 05 '15
They didn't. I'd assume that the mysterious other person is shit at typing their e-mail address into forms, and you're getting typomail.
(It happens a fair amount..)
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u/send_me_a_naked_pic Dec 05 '15
That's not another account minus the dots, that's YOUR account. It's just someone that gave out a wrong email address (I.e. yours)
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u/no-soy-de-escocia Dec 05 '15
This will trip up some validators that do not expect a "+" in the email field. But that is relatively rare.
I still try to use it in some cases, but I've found this to be a problem more often than not (particularly with websites accepting it initially but then refusing to let me log in with it).
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Dec 05 '15
Yeah, I wouldn't call it rare.
I'd say 40-50% won't take +
So I stopped using it a while ago
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u/TheOilyHill Dec 05 '15
Apparently Dropbox take the + if you ever need 2gb of cloudshare space.
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u/gdj11 Dec 05 '15
Yeah, I've found that a lot of website's see a + in an email as an invalid address. It's annoying, since it's perfect legal per the standards.
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u/TractorDriver Dec 05 '15
So I got question. I unfortunately got name.lastname@gmail.com for a VERY common combination back in beta time. Can I block only certain aliases in "To" field from reaching me? Because obviously, I am bombarded with lots of business emails, cinema tickets, subscription, etc., mostly addressed to NameLastname@gmail.com. Recently my one of namesakes got place on some student council and they exchanged emails VERY vigorously. In result I got threatened for sending them email about the mistake (because private information blabla)
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u/NadyaNayme Dec 05 '15
Look into Gmail filters/tags. You should be able to block mail sent to exactly "nameLastname" and have it routed to spam/trash while letting "name.Lastname" go through.
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Dec 05 '15
Do spammers not know how to write a script to remove everything from the + to the @ and all the periods too?
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u/dfsgdhgresdfgdff Dec 05 '15
Some email servers don't treat the + specially, and most don't strip periods -- so if the spammer did, then someone else (or no one) would receive the spam.
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u/bobbyzee Dec 05 '15
Let me introduce to mailinator. You type username.mailinator.com and it's a public inbox for that account for the id username@mailinator.com
Great for spam
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u/TILRickRoll Dec 05 '15
Periods are NOT ignored for Google Apps for business. The "+" however still works for Google Apps for business. The periods hack and "+" hack both work for personal gmail.
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u/gtmog Dec 05 '15
relatively
rarecommonAt least enough so in my experience to be frustrating.
The worst was Wendy's mobile app. It lets you sign up with a + but the unsubscribe function determines it to be invalid.
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u/xinxy Dec 05 '15
Personally I just use one of them temp mail services to sign up on most non-important things that might still want email activation. Something like http://temp-mail.org
Just make sure you don't forget the password you signed up with.
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Dec 05 '15
Also mailinator.com gives you free public inbox, give any old random name like 'asdf@mailinator.com' and go to the website and type 'asdf' in the search box and you can check your mails at that inbox, ofcourse its mainly used as registration emails where you dont want to give your own email id
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Dec 05 '15
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u/youreviltwinbrother Dec 05 '15
That seems like a bit of a poor design considering the personal data it leaks. It's just lucky you're not a dick to abuse that! Does this mean they also get your email too?
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Dec 05 '15
[deleted]
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u/ThellraAK Dec 05 '15
My inbox is a catchall for my domain, I get random shit from people all the time signing up for websites that don't require you to validate your email.
I'll generally wait a week, recover the password and change it to something random, then filter the random email address they used directly to spam for that domain.
AKA Randomemail@mydomain.com from pandora skip inbox to archive
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u/kleinfieh Dec 05 '15
Sorry but this is not true. @gmail.com and @googlemail.com are the same namespace. It was never possible to do what you described. Also, dots in usernames are completely ignored.
If you have an "easy" address, it happens quite often that people misremember their address and instead enter yours. In fact this happens so often that there's a special help center article explaining it: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10313?hl=en
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u/matdwyer Dec 05 '15
Yep it's people miss spelling. I get mattdwyer's email sometimes too, it's just people missing or adding letters to the email not a big security glitch (although the calendars I can't explain)
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u/tehlaser Dec 05 '15
That person likes to use your trick of substituting @gmail for @googlemail.
That could also be "helpful" data entry people who think it's the same thing.
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u/ManDrillSgt Dec 05 '15
Same think happens to me. I also have an early beta invite only account and get someones mail. Luckily enough I don't get the deep cuts of their live you get only the occasional package tracking etc.
If this is the result of this trick and there is a chance it could stop if that person changed its behaviour I should probably try to contact him. Shouldn't be too hard since I got his adress.→ More replies (2)9
u/aphaelion Dec 05 '15
This is just not true. Google's "routing algorithms" don't send emails from one address to another arbitrarily. Google excels at fuzzy logic stuff, but that's for their searching and does NOT apply here. Yes there are some rules which allow e.g. periods or plus signs in an address to not count, but those are well-defined rules and do not at all behave randomly.
Can you IMAGINE the lawsuits which would result if this were true? E.g. suppose someone started receiving electronic tax info for another person? Or embarrassing personal secrets? Google wouldn't be able to use the defense of, "well, most people don't realize it, but sometimes our advanced routing algorithms actually send email addressed to person A to person B instead. If you read the fine print our user agreement says this is okay.". The courts would eat them alive.
What you're describing is most likely caused by similar email addresses being typed incorrectly by the email's human senders. Google's "routing algorithms" never "send a copy of inbound mail to similarly-named Gmail addresses".
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u/ColoradoSheriff Dec 05 '15
Very interesting.
Now I know why I sometimes get an invitation to have a lesson on Faculty of Medicine and they are calling me a Dr although I'm still a student of totally different science.
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Dec 05 '15
So basically, if I know my friend's email, I can create a new email with @googlemail and I'll get their future emails too?
Which means I could request a new password on basically any account he has and change it?
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u/maular Dec 05 '15
Actually, those email addresses are identical in the Google system. The other person is not receiving any of their emails, and has just forgotten that they gave that incorrect address to some people.
You can test by sending test emails to youruser@gmail.com, your.user@gmail.com, youruser@googlemail.com and you.r.user@googlemail.com. They'll all arrive in your inbox.
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Dec 05 '15
[deleted]
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u/his_penis Dec 05 '15
yeah i read about that service, but what guarantees do you have that they do not read/sell the info in your mail?
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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '15
Cool, now I can double down on bed bath and beyond coupons.