Say your email address is scott(at)gmail.com. This email address is fake…I wish I could have it but the username must be six letters or longer.

Anyway, say you want to create an account at Amazon.com. All you have to do is suppy amazon with the email address scott+amazon(at)gmail.com. Or for Ebay, scott+ebay(at)gmail.com. Then, create a filter within Gmail to automatically assign email sent to scott+amazon an Amazon label and scott+ebay an Ebay label. Then, if you start to get spam sent to scott+amazon, and you’ve only used scott+amazon for amazon-related things, then you know that Amazon sold your email address (or was hacked or something). This sweet feature allows you have separate aliases for different Internet services, while still retaining the ability to check all the email in one location.

Before I got Gmail I had a similar system. I had bought the domain for this site www.klettke.org and am currently paying Yahoo $10 a year (a very cheap price I think) for my own email @klettke.org email address. I could set up my own email server but lack a dedicated Internet connection for that use. The $10 per year includes one email address but an unlimited number of forwards. So, in effect, I have the same feature that is discussed above. For example, my blogging email is blog ( at ) klettke. org. This is a forward that used to forward it to my main @klettke.org account, then to my school’s IMAP account, and now to my gmail account.

Scott