One of the biggest e-irritants I have is that my email address gets “sold” to companies to spam me with promotions by businesses I use (and they deny it). This trick should help identify those buggers.

The trick uses the ability tack on an alias to your gmail address using the ‘+’ character e.g my.username+alias@gmail.com (where ‘alias’ that you’ll track).

So, for example, if you sign up for a service or are supplying an email an address a bank or insurance company, you can use their name e.g when you enter an email address for a bank like ABSA you can supply the address ‘my.username+absa@gmail.com’.

You’ll still receive mail from them in your ‘my.username@gmail.com’ inbox. All you now need to do is create a filter and Label emails to ‘my.username+absa@gmail.com’.

If you receive email or get companies that reference email to ‘my.username+absa@gmail.com’ you know who they got your email address from.

Fight the spam!