TECHnically Speaking: Infinite Email Addresses

infiniteemailFor this installment of TECHnically Speaking, I am going to let you in on a little testing secret I learned years back. At work, I used to be in charge of testing our accounts system. I would have to test creating, modifying and logging in our product day after day. One dilemma in testing our system was our restriction on email address. You couldn’t create accounts with the same email address. This is a great policy for our user base but when it came to testing, I was kind of stuck. I needed to create a lot but didn’t have infinite email addresses…or so I thought.

A few years into the gig, I learned that Gmail had the power to make a ton of email address aliases from just a single account. EUREKA!

So here’s the trick

Take your normal Gmail address and add “+anythingyouwant” after it. So YouRock@gmail.com can also be YouRock+Roll@gmail.com. All emails will come to your inbox like normal. It’s that simple!

Now you might be saying “I don’t test account systems. Why do I need a bunch of emails?” Well the side effect of this is being able to filter your mail on that email address. Want to know when a retailer sells your email address? Tag em! “myemail+potterybarn@gmail.com” will now tell you when Pottery Barn is handing out your email address. Want to know where people are contacting you from? “myemail+linkedin@gmail.com” will now let you know when people found you on LinkedIn. You get the picture.

Gmail is full of fun gems like this. Check out this post for more tips and tools for Gmail!

P.S. Any requests for upcoming tech posts? Let me know!

 

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