Gmail plus addressing and other email alias tricks
2026-07-01
You don't need a second email account to give every website a different address. Most providers ship alias features that let one inbox answer to many names — free, built in, and set up in seconds. Used well, aliases tell you exactly who leaked your address and let you filter senders with surgical precision. Used as your only defense, they leave a gap this article is honest about. Here are the tricks, what they can do, and what they can't.
Plus addressing: one inbox, infinite addresses
Gmail plus addressing is the simplest trick: everything after a + in the local part is ignored for delivery. Mail sent to name+shop@gmail.com, name+newsletter@gmail.com or name+anything@gmail.com all lands in name@gmail.com. Outlook, iCloud, Fastmail and Proton support the same syntax. The payoff comes later: sign up at every site with its own tag — name+zalando@, name+forum@ — and you get two powers. First, attribution: if spam ever arrives at name+zalando@, you know exactly who sold or leaked your address. Second, control: one filter rule sends everything addressed to the burned variant straight to the trash, forever.
The Gmail dot trick
Gmail also ignores dots in the local part: john.smith@gmail.com, j.ohnsmith@gmail.com and johnsmith@gmail.com are all the same inbox. That gives you a handful of extra variants to hand out and filter on. It is less useful than plus addressing — you only get a few combinations, and there is no readable tag telling you which site got which variant — but it has one advantage: a dotted address looks completely normal, while some forms reject the + character. Note that this is Gmail-specific; at most other providers, dots create genuinely different addresses.
Real aliases: Outlook and friends
A step up from syntax tricks are true alias features. Outlook lets you add up to 10 additional addresses to one account — completely different names, no visible connection to your primary address — and you can delete an alias when it starts attracting junk. iCloud offers Hide My Email, Fastmail offers hundreds of aliases with catch-all domains, and forwarding services like SimpleLogin or Firefox Relay generate random forwarding addresses in one click. These solve plus addressing's biggest weakness: the alias doesn't reveal your real address at all.
| Technique | Reveals your real address? | Can be burned? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plus addressing (name+tag@) | Yes — the part before the + is your real address | Filter only — mail still arrives at your account | Leak attribution and filtering |
| Gmail dot trick | Yes — trivially reversible | Filter only | Forms that reject the + sign |
| Provider aliases (Outlook, iCloud, …) | No | Yes — delete the alias, mail stops | Ongoing signups you may want to cut off later |
| Disposable address (10MinMail) | No — no connection to any account | Burns itself after 10 minutes | One-time signups you never want to hear from again |
What aliases cannot do
Aliases are a labeling system, not a wall. Be clear about the limits:
- The mail still lands in your real inbox. An alias redirects spam; it doesn't stop it. You still see it, filter it, and pay attention to it.
- Plus tags are trivial to strip. Spammers know the trick too — automated list-cleaning removes +tag from addresses, and the resulting spam hits your bare address with the attribution gone.
- Your account is still exposed. Every alias resolves to one real, permanent account. If that address ends up in a breach, all the breach-response steps apply to your actual inbox.
- They don't help retroactively. If you're suddenly getting spam, aliases can only protect the signups you do from now on.
When a disposable address is the better tool
Aliases shine for relationships you want to keep on a leash: newsletters, shops you order from occasionally, accounts you might cut off someday. But for a one-time interaction — a download gate, a trial, a Wi-Fi portal, a forum you'll visit once — even an alias is overkill, because it creates a permanent routing rule for a 10-minute relationship. A temporary email address fits better: it exists just long enough to catch the confirmation link, then the address and everything sent to it stop existing. Nothing to filter, nothing to burn, nothing pointing at your real account.
Use both, deliberately
The strongest setup is layered, and it is one of the core habits in our spam-prevention guide: your bare real address for people and critical accounts, tagged or aliased addresses for ongoing subscriptions, and a throwaway for everything you touch once. The first two you already own; the third takes one click — generate a free disposable address, no signup, self-destructing after 10 minutes. Curious about the details? The FAQ has them.