This is a great way to reduce spam and make sure you know who is spamming you.

You know those situations where you’ve got a system in place with a few test accounts on it and each account requires a unique email address?  You then spend ages creating lots of Gmail addresses or using every variation of your work email address until you run out.  Well, no longer.  There is a way you can use one Gmail address in many variations and still receive all the emails into the one mailbox.

The trick is to use a plus sign next to the @ sign in your gmail or google for work email address.  Say, for example, your email address was info@webster-consulting.eu or webster4us@gmail.com.  You’ve set up your account on… let’s say Amazon… to use this email address.  The next account you set up on Amazon insists that you provide a unique email address.  No problem.  Add a + sign within your email just after the name of the email account and put anything you wish after it.  So you could use info+amazon@webster-consulting.eu or webster4us+amazon@gmail.com.  All these addresses will work and you’ll receive the email into your mailbox for info@webster-consulting.eu or webster4us@gmail.com

When you receive the email into your email account, it does show the original email address (the one with the +), so this should, although I haven’t tried it yet, make it possible to filter emails using an email rule.  So if you know that your Twitter account uses the email address myemail+twitter@gmail.com, then you could automatically filter anything that comes into your email box using this address into a Twitter folder.  This trick also means that you can set up multiple Twitter accounts with one email address.

So, a useful way to create as many email addresses as possible and to manage your inbox, all with one little trick.

We hope this helps