Gmail address alias

Feb 4, 2010
Gmail is probably the best free email service available. Along with huge storage (7419.900081 MB & counting at time of writing this post), it also provides free pop and imap serivces. Gmail also offers some very interesting features like undo send, offline gmail etc. Here is a partial list of features.

One of the most coolest feature is email alias. Gmail neglects anything in between + (plus) and @. So any email address can be appended by string of your choice. This is particularly useful when you want to sign in to some less reliable site and you suspicious that the site can start spaming you. In case, a filter can easily take care of these spams. Similarly, Gmail do not recognize . (periods) in any email address. Thus you can insert any number of periods in your email id.
So, if your email address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com, then any email sent to any of the following address will be delivered to your inbox:
  • firstnamelastname@gmail.com
  • first.name.last.name@gmail.com
  • firstname....lastname@gmail.com
  • f.i.r.s.t.n.a.m.e.l.a.s.t.n.a.m.e@gmail.com
  • first.name...last.name@gmail.com
  • firstname.lastname+blog@gmail.com
  • firstname.lastname+my.blog@gmail.com
  • first.name...last.name+bank@gmail.com
  • firstname.lastname+this.site.is.not.good@gmail.com
  • firstname.lastname+@gmail.com
  • firstname.lastname+...+@gmail.com
  • firstname.lastname...+@gmail.com

To matter more interesting Gmail also offers another bonus. Any email ending in @googlemail.com is same as @gmail.com. So, any email sent to firstname.lastname@googlemail.com will also be delivered to your inbox. And yeah, you can replace gmail by googlemail in all the examples above without ruining anything.

Check unofficial user guide and complete gmail tips, if you want to get more out of your gmail.

Enjoy Gmail!!