[brbcoding]

The #1 thing that has helped me to keep emails organized is taking advantage of the + notation that gmail allows... Every store or website I give my email address to, I simply append ([e-mail]) to my email address, which allows for easy filtering later. It also shows me who has been giving out my email address :)

[sksksk]

On a similar note, gmail allows you so put dots in your email address, so when I give my email address out to humans, I use [e-mail], and when I give it to computers, I use [e-mail]

I find that this easily filters out machine generated addresses, always works on forms, and if spambots ever get wise to it, it'd be difficult for them to add in the dot at the correct place, whereas taking out the stuff after the plus would be quite easy

[icelancer]

A significant amount of websites filter on the + and will throw an error as an invalid character in the email string. Very annoying.

[e12e]

Yes, it's very annoying.

I don't use gmail, but used to use <prefix><dash>username (prefix-username@) with qmail - and at some point had to have email at a site that used Exim with standard setup - that allowed <prefix><plus>username (prefix+user@) -- but not with a dash (it is possible to configure Exim to do this - but with qmail it is standard).

That's how I discovered that a lot of sites erroneously filter out + from the username part.

Now host my own email with Exim - but rather than use a prefix, I've just set up Exim to route all users at all subdomains to my inbox, so I can use adresses like:

[e-mail] (s for spam). So far I that have worked fine.

[brbcoding]

Very, very annoying... This is what a friend of mine always sends to those who choose to filter valid characters from email addresses... https://gist.github.com/EHLOVader/4531693

[bcuccioli]

A worse system (read: hack) is to put variable amounts of dots in your email address when you sign up for something, because Gmail strips dots from your account name when delivering your mail. It requires you to remember or write down who got what amount of dots though.

[sneak]

For most, I use sneak+tag@mydomain (Google Apps), but for those, they all get bucketed into my special noncompliant@mydomain email to guard against the eventuality of one of them selling me out.

[burntsushi]

I do something similar with `[e-mail]`, which all get filtered to the same `[e-mail]` which is imported into my gmail.

I get very strange looks whenever I give out my email address in person. But you're right; it's an excellent way to track who gives out my email and it's an easy way to block spam that gets through the filter.

[nikilster]

Whoa no way - I totally didn't know about this. Awesome, so cool! Thanks so much!