Story perspectives

Email Aliases: Track Spam with Gmail and Outlook

10/13/2025

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Summary

Story summary

Google's Gmail and Microsoft's Outlook let users create email aliases by adding a '+' symbol followed by a word to their address.
This helps track which services share or sell email addresses, such as youremailaddress+carvanna@gmail.com.
However, plus addressing does not completely prevent spam, though it helps identify the origin of unwanted emails.
Apple's iCloud Mail offers a "Hide My Email" feature for subscribers that generates random forwarding addresses.

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Story summary

Google's Gmail and Microsoft's Outlook let users create email aliases by adding a '+' symbol followed by a word to their address.
This helps track which services share or sell email addresses, such as youremailaddress+carvanna@gmail.com.
However, plus addressing does not completely prevent spam, though it helps identify the origin of unwanted emails.
Apple's iCloud Mail offers a "Hide My Email" feature for subscribers that generates random forwarding addresses.