Skip to main content

GMail Easter Eggs: Dot Blindess & Email Aliases

Here are two unexplored features in GMail that will can make your Gmail inbox spam proof.

You can then comfortably share your gmail email address on websites, mailing lists and forums without ever worrying about spam or solving CAPTCHAs.

Gmail Easter Egg 1: GMail allows email aliases and unlike Yahoo mail which lets you create just one extra email alias, GMail lets you create infinite number of aliases.

An email sent to paris.hilton@gmail.com or paris.hilton+fans@gmail.com or paris.hilton+blog@gmail.com will all be redirected to one common email address and that is paris.hilton@gmail.com.

Gmail does not recognize characters after the PLUS symbol but the gmail search filter can distinguish between the different address and you can therefore redirect these email to separats gmail folders or apply different labels.

So all emails with the TO: address as paris.hilton+blog@gmail.com [coming from her blog readers] can be automatically redirected to a blog folder in gmail and she can safely trash them when her inbox is approaching the 2 GB limit.

Gmail Easter Egg 2: Gmail cannot recognize dots or periods in email addresses or the user names - that means an address like paris.hilton@gmail.com is the same as paris.hi.lton@gmail.com or paris...hilton@gmail.com.

This is actually a bug than a feature but you can again exploit it to have different kind of email address in your forum signatures.

Keep in mind that hyphens (-) and underscores (_) can't be used in a Gmail address. Also, gmail user names are case insensitive, so it doesn't matter if you enter upper case or lower case letters.

Popular posts from this blog

How to Download Contacts from Facebook To Outlook Address Book

Facebook users are not too pleased with the "walled garden" approach of Facebook. The reason is simple - while you can easily import your Outlook address book and GMail contacts into Facebook, the reverse path is closed. There's no "official" way to export your Facebook friends email addresses or contact phone numbers out as a CSV file so that you can sync the contacts data with Outlook, GMail or your BlackBerry. Some third-party Facebook hacks like "Facebook Sync" (for Mac) and "Facebook Downloader" (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends' names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use. How to Download Contacts from Facebook There are still some options to take Friends data outside the walls of Facebook wall. Facebook offers the Takeout option allowing you to download all Facebook data locally to the disk (include

PhishTank Detects Phishing Websites by Digg Style Voting

OpenDNS, a free service that helps anyone surf the Internet faster with a simple DNS tweak , will announce PhishTank today. PhishTank is a free public database of phishing URLs where anyone can submit their phishes via email or through the website. The submissions are verified by the other community members who then vote for the suspected site. This is such a neat idea as sites can be categorized just based on user feedback without even having to manually verify each and every submission. PhishTank employs the "feedback loop" mechanism where users will be kept updated with the status' of the phish they submit either via email alerts or a personal RSS feed . Naturally, once the PhishTank databases grows, other sites can harness the data using open APIs which will remain free. OpenDNS would also use this data to improve their existing phishing detection algorithms which are already very impressive and efficient. PhishTank | PhishTank Blog [Thanks Allison] Related: Google

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a popular tech blog by  Amit Agarwal . Our popular Google Scripts include  Gmail Mail Merge  (send personalized emails with Gmail ),  Document Studio (generate PDFs from Google Forms ) and   File Upload Forms ( receive files  in Google Drive). Also see  Reverse Image Mobile Search , Online Speech Recognition and Website Screenshots , the most useful websites on the Internet.