I get a lot of annoying spam email, I know that a lot of people do too, but I recently discovered something that enables me to track who has given who my email address.
In order to sign up to, well, any website these days, you have to give them your email address, in order to prove you are a real person, but a simple trick lets you track who is giving who your email address to who.
Say you sign up to my blog, your email address is i_love_biscuits@biscuitlover.com – by simply adding +<websitename> to your email address before the @ symbol, you can, relatively reliably, check who is selling your email address!
For example, i_love_biscuits+millsie.net@biscuitlover.com passes 99% of validators due to it being in RFC 2822 – however, some validators are too strict and won’t let you use it.
Using the +<websitename> or any other +<randompieceoftext> is a step closer to finding out who is selling your email address (or, giving it out for free!) – and the message will still enter your inbox, at which point you can create filters etc based on the To: field of the email to filter it down even more.
