Being a citizen of the digital world, the Internet is now a necessary substance of the modern human beings. Today most of the services like shopping, online banking, Mobile-DTH recharge, Cooking Gas booking, movie tickets, railway-airplane-bus reservations, holiday planning, etc. takes place online. Moreover, the government rolling out various facilities, information via the Internet. To enjoy these services, you shall need an account on that website. These accounts strongly recommend an email address and/or mobile number for registration.
Submitting an email is not a problem. However, selling those emails to spammers is the real problem. This may push user into trouble. Today lots of free services providers have indulged in such practices. They usually offer the bounty / premium files in exchange of your email id, later they sell it to spammers and advertisement agencies for financial gain.
It’s necessary to know who is selling your email id, person/website behind selling our emails with malicious intentions. To distinguish them, you must submit a unique email id to a website. But Does it possible? Does is it feasible to create a new email id each time?
At first, it looks complex and time-consuming. But, in fact, it’s a remarkably simple task. Believe me, you can create a unique email id without creating new email account. Looks funny, but seriously, it’s possible to do so.
By following below rule, you can get mastery over to do so. Merely 4-5 seconds need to convert current email to unique email id. Not joking it’s a matter of your typing speed.
Method A: Using Plus (+) sign
Now come to the point. We have successfully experimented this trick with Gmail ID to know who is selling email id. Simply you must add + (plus sign) following a unique word before @ sign.
- For example: While creating a new account on example.com, Simply rewrite current email address (i.e. myname@gmail.com) as follows,
- myname+example@gmail.com
You may fall in doubt by this scheme. Let’s time to disclose the secret of Gmail.
Gmail ignores + (plus sign) and the word whatever you have written after that.
So, it can’t affect the functionality of your email system. It makes sense to manipulate this feature to protect our digital identity. And of course, be protected from the spamming activity.
FIND OUT: WHO IS SELLING YOUR EMAIL TO SPAMMERS
Just review spam folder and check “to” address from the header of that email. It will reveal your email id used by the spammer.
For example, an email sent to your myname+example4@gmail.com id; clearly indicates, example4.com is indulging in spamming or selling email to spammers.
You can contact the concerned website support team with this proof. This might serve as a powerful evidence to explain to website administration. If they don’t obey your request, then you can contact to hosting provider too. They can suspend their account. You can fetch the website and hosting provider’s details through whois service. But it solely subjects to morality.
It is also possible that the website owner himself unknown about this fact. As someone from their organization (i.e. employee) indulges in such activity without his/her knowledge. Or the website may be hacked by spammers. If possible, delete an account on such website to refrain from future spamming.
On the other hand, the spammer mostly doesn’t honor a request to remove our email address from their database. Even honored, they can keep spamming through other channel/listing.
In this situation, you can block all emails coming from such domains by using Gmail’s filter feature. So, it will save your lots of time. Also, helpful to keep inbox clean and minimal.
Method B: Use of Dot (.) sign
Alternatively, you can add a dot sign with a unique pattern. It will create a unique email id from current email id. Useful for a user with few accounts on the web. Or need not need to open too many accountants on the web. For example, a 5-6 account on any website.
Now I am disclosing the second secret of Gmail.
Gmail allow user inserting or removing “.” [dot] from your Gmail address.
- For example, the email address myname@gmail.com can be written in a various way without affecting the delivery system. You can write myname@gmail.com in many ways as follow,
- m.yname@gmail.com
- my.name@gmail.com
- myn.ame@gmail.com
- m.y.name@gmail.com
- mynam.e@gmail.com
Above all email look different to eyes, but technically Gmail treats them same. How surprising it is…!
Using this method, you can create multiple yet unique email ids. In case spamming email, as explain above, just fetch “to” address. Now match it with the original website to whom you provided the same address. Simply copy-paste that address in the search box. You will easily find out the suspected website on the base of a presence of your account. The second method is suitable for less tech savvy people. Those who need sign up occasionally.
However, the first method is useful for long term. As you can modify the word after ”+” sign as much as you want.
Bonus Tip
You can create multiple accounts on the same website with the same email account. Just use one or both of above two methods. Generally,
- myname@gmail.com
- myname+example4@gmail.com
- my.name@gmail.com
will be treated as different email address by most of the websites. In fact, both represent same email address.
