Originally Posted by
crackjack
Yes, Gmail has ‘aliases’, but they’re not as useful when trying to mask your email address; it would be quite easy for anyone to identify the actual base email address if they were looking for it or write a script to strip out the ‘+’ and anything between it and the ‘@‘.
I maxed out my 10 aliases for Hotmail a while ago, now just keep track of whether I need to cancel one and create a new one in its place (they have some controls around removing / replacing aliases... something like no more than 3 a year?)
Apple Mail does allow custom aliases, apparently... but not sure how many people actually use it.
Y!mail.... *shrug*. Gotta remember to export everything out before the Oath sale is fully closed...
Completely agree that the + and dot don't hide anything, but these are things allowed by the email standards and should work with any email provider, and it gives you the ability to easily filter your email.
You can create real aliases in gmail also, just create another gmail account, then in the account you want to use, the real one, you add the other account there, in gmail/settings/accounts and import, "check mail from other accounts" and if you want the option of sending from the alias in the main account, add it to "send mail as", which will give you a pull-down in the compose window to select the sending account.
For people with google apps accounts, it's a lot simpler, you can just create aliases (in the same domain) in the management console.
-David