The Plus Side of Having a Gmail or Outlook account. Period.
Most of us know we can use periods to create multiple Gmail addressing scenarios. For instance, you.are.not.eb@gmail.com is the same as youarenoteb@gmail.com.
And my.grammar.is.not.as.bad.as.you.think@gmail.com is the same as
mygrammarisnot.as.bad.as.you.think@gmail.com
and also, the same as
mygrammarisnotasbadasyouthink@gmail.com
Or, if you dare, I.dodge.darcys.email@gmail.com is the same as
idodgedarcysemail@gmail.com.
One important rule though – you can’t use a period directly before the @ sign in your email address. That is a no-no!
This is for Gmail users. Period.
However, do not try the above with Outlook.com accounts or you’ll be sorry because you won’t get mail addressed to you that way and you’ll be wasting time thinking of clever email addresses. If you want to be clever with periods (or dots) then you need Gmail. And if you hurry, you might still find that eb.rides.a.broom@gmail.com is still available!
This is for Gmail + Outlook users
You can plus your way to additional email accounts with Gmail and Outlook.com using a plus sign. So if you are writing the CIA (I don’t advise it) you can use YourUserName+CIA@gmail.com. For example AbrahamTuwitze+CIA@gmail.com or AbrahamTuwitze+CIA@outlook.com. See? This gives you zillions of new email addresses and yet only having one.
Think of the possibilities:
AbrahamTuwitze+Electric_company_complaint@gmail.com
AbrahamTuwitze+Cable_Company_Stinks@outlook.com
AbrahamTuwitze+Love_Cloudeight@gmail.com
AbrahamTuwitze+Love_Cloudeight@outlook.com
AbrahamTuwitze+General-Martins-Guns@outlook.com
AbrahamTuwitze+General-Martins-Guns@gmail.com
Got it? Use your imagination, just remember the first thing in your email address (before the + ) must be your real address.
AbrahamTuwitze@gmail.com
See? So Abraham can put anything after AbrahamTuwitze+ as long as the words are connected with dashes — or underscores ____ or periods. For example, AbrahamTuwitze+I-Love-the-CIA@outlook.com is the same as AbrahamTuwitze@outlook.com. Whatever you put after the + is up to you, but anyone can figure out your real email address because it’s what comes before the + (plus sign) that counts. See?
AbrahamTuwitze+EB.Rides.A.Broom@gmail.com
AbrahamTuwitze+EB.Rides.A.Broom@outlook.com
And so that should give you all kinds of ideas.
Another good reason to use PLUS + addressing
Another good reason to use + (Plus) after your email user name, is to see where your spam is coming from.
Let’s say you want to sign up for Fred’s Great Onion Recipes email newsletter and your name is Lucy Jupiter. You can use the PLUS sign + to sign up to Fred’s mail list with your lucy-jupiter@gmail.com or outlook.com address using plus addressing this way:
lucy-jupiter+Freds-Mail-List@gmail.com
or
lucy-jupiter+Freds-Mail-List@outlookcom.
Now assuming you don’t use that PLUS address for anything else, if you start getting an avalanche of spam coming to your lucy-jupiter+Freds-Mail-List@gmail.com or outlook.com address, you can be pretty sure that old Fred is abusing your email address.
A couple more things
PS: In case you’re wondering about my casual use of capital and lowercase letters, let me remind you that:
eMaiLaDdresseSaReNotCASeSenSitiVE@I-tells-ya.com
PPS: If your name is Abraham Tuwitze and you get a lot of junk mail because of this, we’re sorry. If you send a large donation we’ll take your name down 🙂
I still use my old hotmail.com account, but since the recent update, when I go to Outlook my old messages are all gone. If I use my older Win 10 laptop and go to hotmail.com(which directs me to Outlook) they are still there. How can this be?
There is no Hotmail.com and there has not been for a long time. All @hotmail.com, @msn.com, @live.com, @live.ca all redirect to outlook.com yourhotmailname@hotmail.com is your outlook.com user and will still work but all Microsoft accounts redirect to outlook.com.
I don’t know what this has to do with Windows updates. I would guess it’s a browser issue.
Interesting. That must be why I am continually getting email from a company that I do not do business with including thank yous and/or receipts for my “recent purchase”. It’s my email address but with a period in it. I’ve contacted the company but I still get the email… frustrating to me and it must be to the person who has my email address with the period in it. I’m sure she’s not getting what she needs.