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Plus Addressing (Email Address Tagging)

Some mail servers allow users to add tags to the local part of their email address to create unlimited email aliases on-the-fly.  For example, if your mail server supports this feature and your email address was:

joe@example.com

Then all of the following would be treated as the same email address:

joe@example.com
joe+temp@example.com

joe+abcwidgets@example.com
joe+2018-01-09@example.com

The tag (e.g. "+temp") can be used to apply custom filtering rules.  You can also mark an individual tagged address as "invalid" while keeping the main address active.  This is helpful for creating single-use or "disposable" email addresses.

SpamHero supports the following delimiter characters for email address tagging:

  • Plus (+)
  • Equals (=)
  • Hyphen (-)

In other words, SpamHero treats all of the following email addresses as the same address:

joe@example.com
joe+plus@example.com
joe=equals@example.com
joe-hyphen@example.com

Keep in mind that your mail server must support address tagging in order to use this feature.   Your mail provider may also refer to this feature as  sub-addressing, plus addressing or tagged addressing.

Check out Wikipedia for more information and some of the pitfalls of this feature:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Sub-addressing

Last updated February 20, 2024