Popular Gmail-address
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I'm a student named Tyler who is getting US Federal Student Aid, I have an Instagram profile and an Apple account under the name Staci which I kind of like. The Gallagher family is considering me to be an intimate friend if not relative. Ebay is asking me to secure the account of Sarah. And that's just what's accumulated in my busy life this month.
In December I downloaded GIF Keyboard onto my Iphone, I was invited to donate blood for the Redskins. I had a Netflix account, it seems. I also lived in the city of Carson and was probably going to be fined over an ordinance violation there. I'm going on a cruise with Norwegian Cruise Line, my presumed wife Rosemary will join me. The Barkschat family invited me for Christmas.
The NSA knows I bought a Toyota in Florida and have an upcoming vehicle inspection in Maryland. I'm also interested to buy real estate in Canada. Who the fuck are Fifties Connect and Something Serious Mature who want me to verify my address? I must have been drunk.
Email is hard.
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That's why is suffix most of my email account entries with the name of the site I'm currently on, so I can know who sold it.
Looks like this: MyEmailAddress2016+Forbes@gmail.com
Gmail apparently skips anything after (and including) the plus symbol in the email address when routing mail, so it still gets delivered to MyEmailAddress2016@gmail.com, but with the full MyEmailAddress2016+Forbes@gmail.com as sent by the originator.Nifty, neh?
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Nifty, neh?
Nifty.
I knew about the feature but it never crossed my mind to use it to track who sold my email.
Nifty. Nifty shit.
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feature
Well, it's technically a bug, not a feature. :P Lateral thinkers just figured out how to turn it into a feature!
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I'm not entirely sure it's a bug, since the support site has a page for it.
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Huh. And apparently it's existed since at least late 2013, so maybe I'm TRWTF?
Serves me right for not reading the help pages....
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it still gets delivered to MyEmailAddress2016@gmail.com, but with the full MyEmailAddress2016+Forbes@gmail.com as sent by the originator.
I do that, too, but not with gmail. The MDA I used to use when I was running my own mail server (I can't remember what it was; it's been too many years) allowed creating rules for processing based on what, if anything, followed a
-in the address. Unfortunately, 99% of my spam comes to the base address with no suffix, so it really doesn't help me.
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Well, it's technically a bug, not a feature.
bug? no. they did that deliberate.
i'd link to the help but i'm sure i've already been
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Yep.
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Yay that would be useful if I'd ever passed out this address to anybody. I haven't. Other people have been using it without my consent.
I registered a Gmail account as a backup if my primary service should fail. It could be useful at some point to have an account with a powerful player when things break. Nobody I know knows I am reachable by this address. I just login sometimes and delete accumulated spam and confused emails.
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And apparently it's existed since at least late 2013, so maybe I'm TRWTF?
Naw, it goes back decades from old Unix sendmail.
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I'm not entirely sure it's a bug, since the support site has a page for it.
The begin-file-name-with-dot-to-hide-it thing is well documented too, and it started as a bug inls.
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Not only is + a feature, and a documented feature-- but it has a purpose. If you create a tag in your Gmail, anything with +ThatTag will get that tag.
So it's even easier to visualize who has been selling your email address.
Except for the sites which don't let you enter the +whatever bit.
Fuck those sites. Or you can usually throw together a greasemonkey script to disable the client-side check. Almost all of those sites don't revalidate on the server, so you're good.
As an added bonus, a lot of spammers will throw away "invalid" email addresses, like those with a +, so you're less likely to be spammed.
so I can know who sold it.
Everyone says they do this. But what good is that information? Companies will literally never stop doing this, even if you explicitly ask them not to. Because there will always be a loophole in the EULA that says "fuck you, we can do whatever we want". Or even if the EULA somehow excludes that, they'll do it anyways because "fuck you, whatcha going to do about it".
Now, if you were compiling a database and making a living out of constantly suing every company that misused your email address ($10k a pop in small claims), then I'd have more respect and say "nifty".
https://xkcd.com/1279/
I get lots of email for l[a-z]*kates@gmail.com
- Someone in Savanna, Georgia gets his Toyota repaired, and I get the notices
- Another person gets her eyelashes done at least 4 times a month at Lash Looks. I think she has a problem
- Got vacation photos at some point
But the best was someone named Lori Kates who signed up for some bullshit new-age holistic healing college in Toronto. I was on her classnotes distribution list, which was full of notes to "my beautifuls" and referenced "may the light be with you" more than once. For their graduation, they were organizing a "farewell to us" party. Someone was suggesting (and suggesting way too eagerly) they all go hang out at a sex club in Toronto. I guess that was too much "hippy-dippy" even for this bunch of gluten-deficient snowflakes, because they all politely declined.
After graduation, I got a ton of emails from every single one of them in the format of "Hi my lovelies, hope the light is shinning bright on you. So anyways, I can't find any clients or any work, so if anyone has any leads for me..."
You mean your bullshit 4 month certification to be a "spiritual holistic healer" or whatever isn't panning out to be a lucrative career? People aren't beating down your door to pay you thousands of dollars to touch their charkra and sell them overpriced sugar pills?
They emails did eventually peter out-- which is good, because I was getting ready to email around a rant on pseudoscience and bad life choices.
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lolol.
I haven't had any trouble finding out what I want to know about people.
So, any additional information I get through near misses is just icing on the cake.
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@Lorne_Kates said:
Or you can usually throw together a greasemonkey script to disable the client-side check.
That's no good when the site integrates with Google Sign-In and the only other option is Facebook *shiver*. I guess you could go through the effort of changing the primary email address on your Google account, sign in, then change it back, but that's overkill.
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Google Sign-In
Why would Google Sign-In, which is a Google production, which allows "+" in email addresses-- disallow + in your login?
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Likely the site in question has fucked up the integration
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Or it's Google Oauth SSO - you can't change what you get back from Google's API
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That's what I mean: the site fucked up the integration and is rejecting the perfectly valid data Google is feeding it.
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@Lorne_Kates said:
Why would Google Sign-In, which is a Google production, which allows "+" in email addresses-- disallow + in your login?
@RaceProUK said:Likely the site in question has fucked up the integration
What? That isn't how Google Sign-In integration works. You have to sign in to your Google account, and no matter what email you sign in with, the app will just ask Google for your primary email address because it knows nothing about the sign in (you could already be signed in). You know that page that says "<app> is requesting the following permissions:" and one of them is basic info/email? Some apps will take all your emails but most just take the primary email. Also the permission screen is stupid and it's either deny-all or accept-all, like Android <6.
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Some apps will take all your emails
Exactly. And then it throws a hissy fit when it sees one with a+in it.
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Don't think Google even sends + addresses
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@Lorne_Kates said:
"may the light be with you"
Sounds like Disney lawyers got them by the balls at some point.
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I have ${lastname}@gmail.com. It's not a terribly common last name, so I don't get too much crap from other people. I did get architectural plans for a new building somebody was about to buy/build. For a few weeks, I used to get the weekly meeting notes from some french entity (my french sucks, so I didn't bother finding out what that was about). Then there's some guy ordering a lot of tennis stuff and protein powder.
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it never crossed my mind to use it to track who sold my email
The +suffix thing is widely used (it's not just Gmail) and any spammer worth their scraping fee is just going to remove that part from all harvested addresses.
That said, I use it too, on the grounds that most spammers will not be worth their scraping fees.
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@Lorne_Kates said:
People aren't beating down your door to pay you thousands of dollars to touch their charkra and sell them overpriced sugar pills?
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@thegoryone said:
(Who the hell sends out plaintext passwords when you sign up with them nowadays?)
I like the service, but damn! 8 characters only, too!
Naturally, I created a new unique 20-character password in KeePass about 17.4 femtoseconds later.
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That's why is suffix most of my email account entries with the name of the site I'm currently on, so I can know who sold it.Looks like this: MyEmailAddress2016+Forbes@gmail.com
Except for companies that seem to think that the local part of that email address is invalid.
Even worse when they only do it some of the time..
Huh. And apparently it's existed since at least late 2013, so maybe I'm TRWTF?
Threads quoted above go back to 2008 and Google using + was mentioned there.
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@Lorne_Kates said:
Why would Google Sign-In, which is a Google production, which allows "+" in email addresses-- disallow + in your login?
You can't use the + when signing into Gmail.
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Likely the site in question has fucked up the integration
Or...You can't use the + when signing into Gmail.
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I should open my job search inbox some time, but my name is unusual enough that I doubt it'll have anything but 20,000,000,000 recruitment emails.
My main addresses aren't namelike, so I'm safe there too. Fascinating.
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Wow, sounds like you are highly sought after!
By people in India and every state I don't live in, yes.
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janus@squaresoft.com?
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I still have a catch-all on my domain name, which is just my last name and the standard personal Australian 2LD, which isn't very widely known. I usually use sitename@myname.id.au, which ensues hilarity when giving it over the phone or something. "Do you work for us? How did you get an email address with our name in it?"
Interestingly some spammers seem to know about this idea and I get some spam that is random hex codes for the local part.
I have gotten emails addressed for other people sharing my last name which is funny as well.
Annoying thing is the "id" and autocorrect!
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which ensues hilarity when giving it over the phone or something
I have a friend who managed to get
firstname.lastname@mail.comages ago. He loves giving that one over the phone because a bunch of people assume he has no idea what he's talking about.No, sir, your email can't be
something@mail.com, are you sure it's notgmailor similar?
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I'm not entirely sure it's a bug, since the support site has a page for it.
Definitely not a bug. It's a [URL=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Sub-addressing]commonly supported feature[/URL] and even has a [URL=https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5233]standards-track RFC[/URL] explaining how the IETF thinks it should be supported.
The e-mail standards state (pretty much) that whatever appears to the left of the "@" (the "local part" of an address) can be interpreted by the destination server in whatever way it wants. Using a delimiter for creating sub-mailboxes is completely valid.
And apparently it's existed since at least late 2013
Much longer than that. The RFC is from 2008, and I remember playing with this while in college in the early 90's.
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I have a pet moron who has $alias@mail.com to my $alias@gmail.com. Loads of fun, I tell you!
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Just now: long email thread forwarded to me from Jacob C Goodling <jgoodling@ufl.edu> of the University of Florida's archery club. The thread includes a very detailed discussion with a shirt vendor, and a complete invoice for 10 shirts for the club.
Jacob would like to know my opinion about the shirts.
They look fine to me, but I don't think that matters.
I think he wanted Dr. Frederick R. Kates <kates.rick@phhp.ufl.edu> of the Health Services Research, Management & Policy department.
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@Lorne_Kates said:
Dr. Frederick R. Kates <kates.rick@phhp.ufl.edu> of the Health Services Research, Management & Policy department.
How do you mess that up? Do faculty have the same domain as students?!
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Maybe he sent it to Frederick's personal email? Like fkates@gmail.com Except f and l aren't anywhere close to each other on the keyboard. Maybe Dr. Dumbfuck uses DVORAK
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@Lorne_Kates said:
Maybe he sent it to Frederick's personal email?
Who knows? Whatever they did, it obviously wasn't "Pick from the contacts list" or "Click this little letter icon where it says "Email me" on the faculty page".
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@Lorne_Kates said:
Jacob would like to know my opinion about the shirts.
They look fine to me, but I don't think that matters.Apparently Dr. Goodling there didn't do his PhD is subtle sarcasm. Just got a reply:
I guess the real question I mean to ask is can our club's account perform a money transfer and how do I do it?
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[poll]
- Maybe you should ask Frederick instead of me?
- Why not use cash, like we did for the hookers?
- I can do the transfer. I'm on my phone, can you send me the account number?
[/poll]
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No idea what your club's account can do. I always use cash when I pay for services (construction, wait staff, hookers, cleaning, etc).
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@Lorne_Kates said:
Except f and l aren't anywhere close to each other on the keyboard. Maybe Dr. Dumbfuck uses DVORAK
F and L are exactly as far removed from eachother on QWERTY and Dvorak.
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Nice
shame about the lack of dickweedery?
