Gmail, unlike other e-mail providers, contains a very awesome "secret"...
And that is...one e-mail address can be used in many ways!!!
first of all, you can change your @gmail.com into @googlemail.com and those mails will still send towards your Gmail inbox. For example my Gmail address is shauntmw@gmail.com, anything you sent to shauntmw@googlemail.com will be received by me in the same mailbox too.
Secondly, you can add dots in between your Gmail address, and they will be sent to your Gmail inbox too. Anything sent to shaun.tmw@gmail.com will be sent to my mailbox too. Those dots can be added in any place between your Gmail account name, and at most one dot each between 2 characters, for example s.h.a.u.n.t.m.w@gmail.com.
Last, and the most useful one. You can add anything behind your Gmail account name by adding a "+" sign. For example, anything sent to shauntmw+anything@gmail.com will also be sent to my mailbox. You can add anything you want.
So, a summary for you. Basically e-mails sent to following addresses will be sent to the same person, which is me.
- shauntmw@gmail.com
- s.hauntmw@gmail.com
- sh.auntmw@gmail.com
- sha.untmw@gmail.com
- shau.ntmw@gmail.com
- shaun.tmw@gmail.com
- shaunt.mw@gmail.com
- shauntm.w@gmail.com | - shauntmw@googlemail.com
- s.hauntmw@googlemail.com
- sh.auntmw@googlemail.com
- sha.untmw@googlemail.com
- shau.ntmw@googlemail.com
- shaun.tmw@googlemail.com
- shaunt.mw@googlemail.com
- shauntm.w@googlemail.com |
- s.h.auntmw@gmail.com
- sh.a.untmw@gmail.com
- sha.u.ntmw@gmail.com
...
...
...
- s.h.a.u.nt.m.w@gmail.com
- s.h.a.u.n.tm.w@gmail.com
- s.h.a.u.n.t.mw@gmail.com
- s.h.a.u.n.t.m.w@gmail.com |
- s.h.auntmw@googlemail.com
- sh.a.untmw@googlemail.com
- sha.u.ntmw@googlemail.com
...
...
...
- s.h.a.u.nt.m.w@googlemail.com
- s.h.a.u.n.tm.w@googlemail.com
- s.h.a.u.n.t.mw@googlemail.com
- s.h.a.u.n.t.m.w@googlemail.com |
- shauntmw+YourEmailAddress@gmail.com
- shauntmw+YourWebsite@gmail.com
- shauntmw+AnythingYouLike@gmail.comOK, it's a huge list. In fact, there're infinite combination of e-mail addresses for you to use.
So what's the point?You can have one e-mail for many purposes. Instead of giving out your Gmail address directly, you can give
Name.Surname@gmail.com to your collegues,
NameSurname@gmail.com to your friends and family, use
N.ameSurname@gmail.com for newsletters etc. Then you can make use of the Gmail's filter function to filter out mails that sent to Name.Surname into work folder, mails sent to NameSurname filter out to personal folder etc. This should keep your mailbox neat and multi-purpose.
You can track or block spammers with the "+" sign. When you are going to sign up for a certain forum or website, you can sign up that particular website using
YourEmail+TheWebsite@gmail.com. Like this, you can block your subscription whenever you wish easily. You can even track and identify spammer website that distribute your e-mail address to other third party spammer websites.
