Addresses
Gmail supports plus-addressing of e-mails. Users can send messages to addresses in the format username+extratext@gmail.com, where extratext can be any string, and will arrive in the inbox of username@gmail.com. This allows users to sign up for different services with different aliases and then easily filter all e-mails from those services. In addition, if users receive spam messages directed to an e-mail address with the extra text, they will know what services have leaked out their e-mail address. However, some websites do not accept email addresses containing "+", even though the mail-address specification permits use of them.
Gmail allows the user to add other email accounts to be used as optional sender addresses on outgoing email. The system carries out a verification process to confirm the user's ownership of each email address before it is added. "Plus-addresses" can also be added as sender addresses in a similar way. Moreover, any of the additional addresses can be set as the default address.
When using this feature, the address chosen will appear in the "From:" field of the message header. However, the SMTP envelope sender address will contain the name of the Gmail account used to send the message. Thus the underlying Gmail account address remains readily available: it will typically appear in a "Sender:" header field, or occasionally in the subject field. Some mail clients will write "From: Sender@gmail.com On Behalf Of..." upon reply, making the situation very obvious.
Gmail does now allow users to specify a 3rd party SMTP server. Gmail can use this to send outgoing email for that particular account avoiding the masked account problem.
Optionally, users can set a different "Reply-to:" address for each "send as" address.
Gmail does not recognize dots as characters within a username. Instead, it will ignore all dots in a username. For instance, the account google@gmail.com receives mail sent to goo.gle@gmail.com, g.o.o.g.l.e@gmail.com, etc. Likewise, the account goo.gle@gmail.com receives mail sent to google@gmail.com. This can help in setting filters for incoming mail. Likewise, it is not necessary to include any of dots used in the creation of the account. Also this does not work in Google Apps for Your Domain. In Apps, each username variation must be entered as a nickname by the domain administrator.
Read more about this topic: Gmail Interface
Famous quotes containing the word addresses:
“The fable, which is naturally and truly composed, so as to satisfy the imagination, ere it addresses the understanding, beautiful though strange as a wild-flower, is to the wise man an apothegm, and admits of his most generous interpretation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The question “From where does the poet get it?” addresses only the what, nobody learns anything about the how when asking that question.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend to what addresses the senses.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)