For most, spam has become the bane of email’s existence and because of the value to communication that email brings we’ve had no choice but to tolerate the inundation of spam into our Inboxes. To me, Gmail has become the defacto standard in how webmail and email in generally should be done. Google’s spam filter is phenomenal; at any given time I have over 20,000 emails in my Spam folder on Gmail. How many actually began in my Inbox, waiting for me to deal with the situation? A handful, daily. I can deal with that.

How have I been able to get a handle on the outrageous spam situation? Gmail’s built-in spam filter can take the bulk of that credit to be totally honest. While just about every email solution includes some sort of spam filtering, not everyone as successful as at combating spam as my setup with Gmail. So what’s the brilliant secret? Well, don’t give out your email address! I kid! Somewhat, at least. What I mean is, don’t provide your actual Gmail address on forms or registration pages across the Internet, rather, take advantage of a few Gmail hacks that you may not be aware of.

Here is a true example that I use regularly.

We all buy things online, it’s a way of life and generally a safe and pleasant experience nowadays. Most every online store requires you to create an account on their site which consists of a username/password, contact information, and an email address. You could just make up a dummy address but that probably isn’t advisable as the company likely will send the order confirmation to that address, or any other useful bits of information pertaining to your order. Perhaps you could have a second email address used just for situations like this? How often would you check it? Some free webmail providers nuke dormant accounts after a set time period of non use. That may be a problem in this circumstance.

If you use Gmail, you have a third option that is much more desirable. Technically, you have three options from within Gmail.

The Plus Hack

To be fair, this is not unique to Gmail but it’s my personal weapon of choice. When filling out those forms, just append a + after you’re the first part of your email address and then provide any word to uniquely identify the account. Confused? Here is what I mean. Let’s say your email address is adam@gmail.com and you are providing this address to your online banking profile. Give them the address of adam+mybank@gmail.com. An email to this address will still end up in your account. How does this block spam? Filters! Simply set up a filter to look for +mybank in the email address and do with it as you please. Obviously, you’d like to think your bank is safe and non spammy, so this is just an example.

An interesting side effect, it would be more difficult to fall to a phishing scam because this address isn’t publicized, it wouldn’t get on a spam list. The phishing attempt would be delivered to adam@gmail.com and not be flagged as if it came from your bank. Make sense?

The Dot Hack

Very similar to the plus hack above, you can place as many dots (.) in your email address as you’d like – Gmail removes them. If your true email address already has dots, first.lastname@gmail.com perhaps, you should know that email will also be delivered if it was sent to firstlastname@gmail.com. Using dots and filters like above, you can accomplish the same goal.

The googlemail Hack

Not nearly as great as the two above in my opinion but it could prove handy in certain situations. adam@gmail.com is the same account as adam@googlemail.com!

So there you have it, with some creativity and the knowledge above you will hopefully be on your way to a less cluttered and spammy Inbox.