Gmail ignores dots in the part before the @, and treats anything after a + as a label. So one account has thousands of working addresses. Generate them, or paste an alias to find out whose inbox it really reaches.
Gmail ignores full stops in the local part — the bit before the @. danareed@gmail.com, dana.reed@gmail.com and d.a.n.a.r.e.e.d@gmail.com are all the same mailbox. It also treats everything after a + as a label that it strips before delivery, so danareed+shopping@gmail.com arrives in the same place. And googlemail.com is an alias of gmail.com.
None of this applies to other providers. Outlook, Yahoo and most business domains treat dots as significant, so the same trick will bounce.
Tracking who sold your address. Sign up with you+shopname@gmail.com and if spam later arrives at that exact label, you know precisely who leaked it.
Filtering. Gmail can file mail by the label it arrived at, so +receipts can skip the inbox entirely.
Finding hidden duplicates in a list. This is what the second tab is for. Fifty rows that look like different people can be one person, and if you're paying per address to verify a list, or sending to it, that matters.
It won't get you multiple free trials — services that care have detected this for years, and stripping the dots is the first thing their signup checks. Some sites also reject the + character outright, which is their bug, not yours.
And it doesn't hide anything. Anyone who knows the rule can read your real address straight off the alias, which is exactly what the second tab does.
Yes. danareed@gmail.com, dana.reed@gmail.com and d.a.n.a.r.e.e.d@gmail.com are all the same mailbox. googlemail.com is also an alias of gmail.com.
Anything after a + in a Gmail address is treated as a label and stripped before delivery, so danareed+shopping@gmail.com arrives in the same inbox. It's useful for filtering, and for finding out who leaked your address when spam later arrives at that exact label.
The dot trick is Gmail-specific — Outlook, Yahoo and most business domains treat dots as significant, so the same address would bounce. Plus addressing is more widely supported, but not universally.
No. Services that care have detected this for years, and stripping dots is the first thing their signup checks. It also hides nothing: anyone who knows the rule can read your real address straight off the alias.
Use the second tab. Paste your addresses and they're collapsed to real inboxes, showing how many variations point at the same person. That matters if you're paying per address to verify a list.