[cryptarch]

I add the name of whomever I'm mailing whenever I enter my address, like "[e-mail]".

If they remove the "+microsoft" portion mailing me, that email is sent to my spambox and reported to spamcop, because I did not sign up with that address; the address I signed up with has the +etc infix.

Eventually I figure companies will get wise to this and I'll have to set up my own server which does the same trick with an underscore instead of the "+" sign.

[imron]

Switch to Fastmail.

You can make addresses on the fly like [e-mail] (which will automatically be resolved and sent to [e-mail]) and you'll save the hassle of having to run and maintain your own mail server.

[Doxin]

gmail supports having +stuff in your email address too. it's fairly easy to set up filters to put stuff into folders based on the email it got sent to.

[imron]

That's different from what I described above.

You don't use a '+' at all in the fastmail email addresses you give out.

For example, say with gmail you have [e-mail], with fastmail you could use that if you wanted, but you can also use [e-mail]

If fastmail receives mail on that address, it converts it for you as if it had been sent to [e-mail] instead.

This happens entirely on the fly so you can make 'proper looking' emails without a '+'

[croon]

That doesn't help if they sell your email though, because you don't know what company to match the spam with.

I use [e-mail] for each service, and i catch every email regardless of mail address.

Sure they can manually fool me or use more sophisticated regex to find their service name (and i can obfuscate it), but in practically all cases i know which service has leaked my address if i get spam against a certain address that's not the service i signed up for.

[bb88]

Not all email validators respect the + symbol.

[cryptarch]

Most do however, and setting up your own server and making it use underscores or dashes for that purpose is one way around that.

Related tutorial on how to set that up in Postfix: https://www.stevejenkins.com/blog/2011/03/how-to-use-address...

[jrsmith1279]

With gmail you can use periods in the email address and gmail will ignore them. i.e. [e-mail] is the same as [e-mail] or even [e-mail].

[SparkyMcUnicorn]

I did that for a bit, but there's only so many variations and remembering which email belongs to which service is not nearly as straight forward.

[tscs37]

The +company trick doesn't work everywhere anymore.

I recommend using a personal domain and a mail service that offers catch-all filters. Stuff regex on that and you can also filter all emails of this type into a specific folder.