Two Gmail Hacks for Fighting Spam

Mark Roudebush at Method recently sent me two ultra-clever Gmail tricks for tracing and preventing spam. Here’s what he wrote:

1. The Plus Hack

You can create alias emails for things like shopping sites, places you know will spam you, or anything you want to track to see who they are sharing your email with. To do this, simply put a “+” after your account name and add words.

For example, I could do “mrmarkymark+onlinepurchases@gmail” or “mrmarkymark+spam@gmail.com”. All of these will come into my inbox, but they can easily be filtered to a folder, to spam or even to the trash.

2. The Dot Hack

Apparently, Gmail doesn’t really acknowledge dots in your account name. So I can use “mr.marky.mark@gmail.com” or “mr.markymark@gmail.com” or without any dots at all, “mrmarkymark@gmail.com”.

This should help if someone can’t remember where that damn dot was in your email address, or again, if you want to distinguish the sender so you can filter emails. I belong to some email groups that send a lot of mail. This is a great way to keep those emails organized so they don’t clutter up my inbox or get mixed up with things that need my immediate attention.

Thanks Mark!

Note to spammers: The example emails are not Mark’s real email addresses, so don’t even think about it.