8/15/19
9:00 am

Take Control Of Your Email With iCloud Plus Addressing

iCloud email allows you to freely add some text to your regular email address to create unqiue addresses that you can use on an as-needed basis. So you can use a slightly different email address when you sign up for a service and easily identify if that service is sending you spam or seling your information. You can also use this to organize legitimate email by filtering into groups that use the same address. However, there are some downsides too.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me teach you about a useful trick called Plus Addressing that you can use with iCloud email.
MacMost is brought to you by a great group of supporters Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about it, join us, and get exclusive content.
So, Plus Addressing or subaddressing is the ability to use a modified email address whenever you want. These addresses look like this. If my regular email address was gary@example.com, I could use gary+something@example.com. The something could be anything. You could use any regular characters there. The key is that little plus symbol there. I use my regular email address followed by a plus sign then any kind of identifier I want and then the @ and my domain name just as before. 
So if your iCloud email address is example@icloud.com then you  could use example+anything@icloud.com and the email that you get at that address will go into your regular inbox.
You don't have to setup anything in advance. You don't have to fill out a form. You don't have to add to a list. You can just use these as much as you want. You can use dozens or hundreds of them. So right away you may see an advantage when it comes to dealing with spam. Because if you can use any special identifier after the plus symbol then everytime you signup for a site you could use your email prefix plus and then something that identifies that site.
So if the site was called somesite.com you could use example+somesite@icloud.com when you signup. Then any email you get from that site will go to that email address and any spam you get, because they've sold your email address, will also go to that email address. Now this is kind of satisfying in that you can figure out who was doing something bad with your email address. But it really doesn't help you. You're still going to get the spam. However, you can set a rule for this.
So if you decide you don't want anything to do with this site anymore you can setup a rule by going to the iCloud.com website. Then go into Mail. Then click the Settings button at a the bottom left hand corner and go to Rules. Here you can add a rule and you can set it to Is Addressed To. So there you can put the plus address, example+somesite@icloud.com, and decide what to do with it. So you can either have it automatically moved to the Junk folder or just Moved to Trash and that takes care of it. You may end up with a bunch of these rules over time but you never have to look at those email messages. If the site refuses to acknowledge your remove me request this rule will take care of it anyway.
While we're here this also brings up another great use for plus addressing. Say you want to signup for a bunch of different email newsletters or maybe some mailing lists for a particular topic. But you want to separate that from your regular email. Well you can create an address like for instance example+wombat@icloud.com for all your email about wombats. So you subscribe to ten different mailing lists about wombats and some different newsgroups and things and you want all of your email having to do with your interest in wombats going to a particular folder. 
You could setup a rule here and you could say if it's addressed to example+wombat@icloud.com with this being your regular email address, this being the plus address there, and then you could say move to a folder. You can create a new folder that's just for holding all your wombat email. Doing this in another way would be very difficult because every newsletter you subscribe to may have different subjects and come from a different place. You would have to setup a whole bunch of different rules to accomplish this. But if they are all sending to the same plus addressed email address, like +wombat, then it's easy to filter them.
Now another reason I can come up with to use Plus Addressing is if you want a little extra security on a site. After all your password should be unique to the website but your email address is probably used across all different sites that you've signed up for. But if you use plus and something special after it then you have an unique login ID for that website as well. Somebody not only needs your password but they need to know the special email address that you used for that site. 
Now that has a big downside as well because you need to remember that email address. Your password manager or Safari in the Keychain may be remembering that just fine. But if for some reason you need to log into a site without that you need to remember that it's not just your regular email address but your regular email address plus something to get into that website. This could lead to trouble even in other situations. Like, for instance, if you need support from that website and maybe they ask you over the phone or on a special support form for your ID, then you have to remember what you put after the plus symbol to know your proper ID for that website.
To make things worse some websites may not accept these Plus Addresses. So they may strip off everything after the plus or may not accept the plus symbol at all. In a few cases you may even be in a situation where it just ignores the plus symbol. This could lead to some sticky situations. For instance if you're using example+somesite@icloud.com as your login that might be seen as exactly the same as examplesomesite@icloud.com. In other words without the plus symbol. That could be somebody else's email address leading to problems for them and for you.
But in general those problems are rare and minor compared to the advantages. I wouldn't overuse this. I would definitely not use this where you think another human being is going to be seeing your email address on the other end because sometimes it could look weird to them and feel a little weird to get an email with a little flag of distrust on it.
I should also note that this works with other systems, not just iCloud. As a matter of fact this started with gmail. So if you're using gmail you can use Plus Addressing. If you even have a gmail server, in other words your own domain but goggle is handling it, then you can use it. A lot of other email services as well. Probably not old ISP email but more modern email service will. It's easy to test. All you need to do is use some other email service, another email address you may have. Try sending yourself an email with a plus something after the prefix or having a friend trying to send you something with a plus something after the prefix. See if it works. If it works you know that your service supports Plus Addressing.

Comments: 18 Responses to “Take Control Of Your Email With iCloud Plus Addressing”

Larry Jordan

5 years ago

I like this and plan to use it. Hopefully it doesn't get too confusing.

Jeff Knouse

5 years ago

My apple email address is @me.com. Will the me.com address work the same as @icloud.com with the plus (+) addressing?

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Jeff: Yes. Easy to test it out and see.

Jerry King

5 years ago

great tip, as always, Gary

I tried to use the + feature in a send mail situation but couldn't seem to modify the From field

So this is for when a site is asking for your email?

Jerry

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Jerry: Exactly.

jerry king

5 years ago

It seems to me that I could go to a website that I had previously given an email address and modify the stored information For example AAA has my email address in its database
Couldn't I edit my member profile to change the address to a +AAA extension?
A project for a slow day

'would these + extensions slow down the data harvesting from database hackers?

Doubt it but would the + extension affect login when the site uses the email address as the user identity?

Jerry

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Jerry: They may slow down data harvesting as your email address would be different at different sites, so it would be hard for them to cross-reference. But it would be easy for the database owners to recognize that + addresses are the same. Not sure if they do or do not right now. As for logging in, yes, the exact email address, with the +AAA would be your ID for the site if that is what you use.

Martin

5 years ago

Thanks for the "+" tip, Gary. My question: Since this technique is so widely used, isn't it easy for the bad guys to discern your "real" email address? Seems to me it wouldn't even require human intervention: a bot used to harvest email addresses for spam (or worse) could be programed to just eliminate the plus sign and all characters following it and then they'd have your core address – no? Thank you again.

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Martin: Do you mean spammers? Maybe. But maybe you're giving them too much credit. I don't think they really look inside the lists of millions of email addresses they use to spam.

Anita B.

5 years ago

I find that an easy easy way, for me, with few downsides, is to generate a new email address for each of the entities on which I wish to surveil.

Jasper Robinson

5 years ago

Martin sets up martin+duffbeer@icloud.com. The notional bad guy at DuffBeer wants to sell her customers' personal details but will be busted if Martin's email is unique—it can only come from DuffBeer. So she runs her 'dirty' email list through BBedit finding the added bit [\+[a-z, 0-9]*@] and replacing with just '@'. This 'cleans' the list (Martin is now martin@icloud.com). Then she can safely sell it on and Martin would never know (I'm a good guy who gets a lot of spam, btw!)

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Jasper: Sure, but: 1) If you just don't use the + address, then they get your email address anyway. And 2) I doubt that spammers put any effort into it like that. They make money by sending to millions of email addresses and hoping that .001% respond.

Edward Ryder

5 years ago

Gary, could you give a very simple example on how to setup the plus email. Do I set it up on my computer? Do I need to modify the site that I am sending email to?
Thank you

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Edward: You don't set anything up. You just use it. If your email is example@icloud.com and you sign up for a service somewhere you want to track, sign up with the email address example+something@icloud.com. Andy email sent to example+something@icloud.com just goes to your regular inbox like it was sent to example@icloud.com but the "to" field will remain example+something@icloud.com in the email so you can do the things I mention in the video.

Pete Freeman

5 years ago

icloud won't allow me to use the + sign. could only use the period ( .) will that work?
Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Pete: The period is very different. But what do you mean by "iCloud won't allow?" It isn't up to iCloud to "allow" you to do anything here. You aren't entering in your email address in anything IN iCloud. The whole idea is you are entering it somewhere like a website that is asking you for your email address to sign up or send you something.

Chris

5 years ago

Isn't Catalina supposed to offer a temporary email address feature?

Gary Rosenzweig

5 years ago

Chris: I'm not heard that. That would be a function of your email provider, anyway.

Comments Closed.

Take Control Of Your Email With iCloud Plus Addressing

Comments: 18 Responses to “Take Control Of Your Email With iCloud Plus Addressing”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information