Find Who’s Leaking Your Email: Alias Trick

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Gmail’s Hidden Feature: How Plus addressing can definitely help You Reclaim Your Inbox

A little-known Gmail feature,dating back to the service’s 2004 launch,empowers users to track data brokers and protect their privacy by revealing which companies are sharing or leaking email addresses.

The modern inbox is a battleground.A pristine email account, initially populated only with welcome messages from legitimate services, quickly devolves into a chaotic stream of unwanted solicitations. This phenomenon, a major source of frustration for internet users, is frequently enough the result of email addresses being sold or compromised. However, a surprisingly simple and effective tool exists to fight back: plus addressing.

As one security expert noted, the plus addressing feature isn’t a silver bullet for eliminating spam, but it does “put some power back in your hands” and help identify which online entities are mishandling user data.

Did you know? – Plus addressing allows you to add a “+” and a tag to your email, like [email protected]. All mail still reaches your inbox.

How Plus Addressing Works in Gmail and Outlook

Both Gmail and Outlook support plus addressing, a technique that involves adding a “+” symbol followed by an alias to your existing email address. For example, instead of using [email protected], you could use [email protected] when signing up for a new car-buying service.

The key is that all emails sent to the aliased address will still arrive in your primary inbox. However, if you begin receiving unsolicited emails at the [email protected] address, you’ll know that Carvanna either sold your details or experienced a data breach.

This method allows users to create unique identifiers for each service they sign up for,effectively tracking the origin of unwanted emails. Consider these examples:

• Signing up for a new social media account? Try: [email protected]
• Subscribing to a newsletter? Try: [email protected]

Reader question: – Can websites block plus addressing? Some forms may reject the “+” symbol, but this is often due to technical limitations, not intentional blocking.

iCloud Mail Offers Alternatives, But With Limitations

apple’s iCloud Mail provides similar functionality, though with some caveats. Subscribers to iCloud+ with more than 5GB of storage have access to “Hide My Email,” which generates unique, random email addresses that forward to your personal inbox.While this doesn’t offer the same investigative capabilities as plus addressing, it provides a higher level of privacy by shielding your real email address altogether.

For those without an iCloud+ subscription, iCloud Mail supports conventional email aliases, but limits users to a maximum of three. these aliases can be created through the iCloud Mail web interface (not available on macOS or iOS) by navigating to Settings > Account > Add Alias.

Pro tip: – Use a diffrent alias for each website to easily identify the source of spam. This helps pinpoint data leaks or sales.

Addressing Potential Limitations

While a powerful tool, plus addressing isn’t foolproof. Some online forms may reject addresses containing the “+” symbol, and there have been reports of marketing agencies attempting to strip the alias from email addresses. However, according to one observer, these attempts are likely due to inefficiency rather than intentional malice, as plus addressing remains relatively uncommon.

Ultimately, the decision of weather or not to utilize plus addressing is a personal one. As one user commented, “I know I do [find it useful],” highlighting the value this feature provides for privacy-conscious individuals.