The Power of Plus Addressing

How to Protect Your Privacy and Fight Spam

Email is one of the most commonly used forms of communication today. However, as we rely more and more on email, we become increasingly susceptible to spam and unwanted messages. Plus addressing is a powerful tool that can help you protect your privacy and fight spam. In this blog, we will explore how to use plus addressing, how it can protect your privacy, and how it can help you fight spam.

How to Use Plus Addressing

Plus addressing is a feature that allows you to create unique email addresses for different purposes, all from the same email account. It works by adding a plus sign and a keyword to your email address. For example, if your email address is john.doe@domain.tld, you could create an address like john.doe+work@domain.tld for work-related emails, or john.doe+shopping@domain.tld for online shopping.

This feature is available with TD Web Services Business and Enterprise Hosting.

How to Protect Your Privacy with Plus Addressing

One of the primary benefits of plus addressing is that it can help protect your privacy. By using a unique email address for different purposes, you can prevent companies from tracking your online activity and targeting you with unwanted ads or messages.

For example, let’s say you sign up for a newsletter from a website using your primary email address. The website may sell your email address to third-party advertisers, who then flood your inbox with unwanted emails. But if you use plus addressing, you can create a unique email address for the newsletter, such as john.doe+newsletter@domain.tld. This way, if the website sells your email address, the spam will only go to that specific address, not your primary email.

Plus addressing can also be helpful when dealing with email lists. If you sign up for a newsletter that requires an email address, but you’re not sure if you want to receive their emails, you can use a plus address, such as john.doe+newsletter2@domain.tld. If you start receiving unwanted emails, you can simply block that email address without affecting your primary email.

How to Fight Spam with Plus Addressing

In addition to protecting your privacy, plus addressing can also be used to fight spam. By creating unique email addresses for different purposes, you can easily track where spam is coming from and block it.

For example, if you receive spam emails to your john.doe+shopping@domain.tld address, you know that the website you used that address for has likely sold your email address to spammers. You can then block that email address and stop the spam from coming in.

Plus addressing can also be helpful when creating filters. Most email services allow you to create filters based on specific keywords in the email address. By using plus addressing, you can create filters that automatically sort emails into different folders based on their purpose. For example, you could create a filter that sends all emails to john.doe+work@domain.tld to your work folder, and all emails to john.doe+shopping@domain.tld to your shopping folder.

Conclusion

Plus addressing is a powerful tool that can help you protect your privacy and fight spam. By creating unique email addresses for different purposes, you can prevent companies from tracking your online activity, track where spam is coming from, and easily sort your emails. It’s a simple feature that is available in most email services, and it’s definitely worth using if you want to take control of your inbox.