Email, Messaging, & Video Calls > Email 239 239 people found this article helpful How to Hack Your Gmail Address to Filter Messages and Add Addresses Use these email hacks to add addresses and filter incoming messages By Marziah Karch Marziah Karch Writer Michigan State University Emporia State University Marziah Karch is a former writer for Lifewire who also excels at Serious Game Design and develops online help systems, manuals, and interactive training modules. lifewire's editorial guidelines Updated on February 15, 2024 In This Article Expand Jump to a Section Add a Dot Anywhere Exception to Add a Dot Add a Plus Sign Reasons to Add a Plus Sign How to Set up Email Filters With Hacked Addresses Gmail Ignores Periods and Plus Signs Trending Videos Close this video player What to Know Add a dot: Gmail ignores dots, but adding a dot will make it seem like a new address to other websites: j.oesfamily@gmail.com.Add a plus sign after the username to add other words to your address: joeman+moretext@gmail.com, joeman+thatsmyname@gmail.com.Set filters: Settings > See All Settings > Filters and Blocked Addresses > Create a new filter. Enter the address > Create Filter. This article explains how to tweak your Gmail address to create dozens of variations that appear different to senders, all without actually making new Gmail accounts. Add a Dot Anywhere Gmail ignores periods in addresses, so put a dot anywhere in your email, and Gmail will pretend it doesn't exist. Any website you sign up for, though, will see your dotted email address as different than your non-dotted one; this means you can sign up for multiple accounts on the same website without needing multiple email accounts. Below are some examples. Keep in mind that each address is the exact same, so you could send mail to all of these to reach the same Inbox. j.oesfamily@gmail.comjo.esfamily@gmail.comjoe.sfamily@gmail.comjoes.family@gmail.comjoesf.amily@gmail.com You can't add a period after the @ sign, but anything before it is open for tweaking. You can even add more than one period, like this: my.business.is.great@gmail.commybusiness.is.great@gmail.comm.y.business.i.s.g.r.eat@gmail.com Again, all three email address above are exactly the same, according to Google. However, you could make three social media accounts with those addresses because they typically assume each address is from a different person. Some websites recognize this behavior and will not let you make more than one account using the same email address, even when you use this period tweak. However, for most websites, you can expect it to work. Exception to Add a Dot You could add several periods right next to each other, too. This method, however, works only for logging into Gmail; you can't send someone a message if two dots are next to each other. these.....are.....the.....same@gmail.comtheseare.the.....s.am...e@gmail.comt.hese.a.r...e.th.e.same@gmail.com Add a Plus Sign Another way to spawn different Gmail addresses with nothing but a syntax trick is to add a plus sign at the end of the username (before the @). Doing this lets you add other words to your address, so it actually can look quite different. Here are a few examples that expand on the email address joeman@gmail.com: joeman+moretext@gmail.comjoeman+thatsmyname@gmail.comjoeman+ilovehunting@gmail.com Reasons to Add a Plus Sign So, why would you want to add a plus sign to your Gmail account? Besides tricking some websites into letting you making multiple accounts as described above, you can more easily understand whether a website is selling your email address to advertisers. For example, if after making an account on a website using joeman+possiblespam@gmail.com, you start getting emails sent to that unique address from companies you've never contacted, you can bet that the site you signed up for gave out your email address. You also can use your plus-sign addresses to set up Gmail filters. For example, if you sign up for an email newsletter with the joeman+ilovehunting example from above, you could make Gmail auto-filter emails sent to that address into a folder that contains messages only from that hunting newsletter. How to Set up Email Filters With Hacked Addresses Here's how to set up email filters with your hacked Gmail address: Click the gear icon on the upper right-hand side of Gmail, and then click See All Settings from the drop-down menu. Click Filters and Blocked Addresses from the Tabs list. Click Create a new filter from the very bottom of the page. Type the special Gmail address in the To text box. For example, you might write joeman+ilovehunting@gmail.com if you want to filter all emails sent to that address. Click Create filter. To automatically move messages sent to this address to a specific folder, select a label next to Apply the label. There's also an option in that drop-down menu to make a new label. Optionally, check any other options you want to enable, such as Mark as read or Never send it to Spam. Click Create filter to finalize the filter. Gmail Ignores Periods and Plus Signs These Gmail address tweaks are possible because Google ignores periods and plus signs in its email addresses. It treats all incoming mail, regardless of a dot or plus sign, as the exact same account. As far as Gmail is concerned, the periods and plus signs are simply not there. If this is confusing, consider this: When you signed up for Gmail and chose your email address, you could have used the tricks above and wound up with the same address you have. In fact, you can log in to Gmail using one of these tweaked addresses, and Google will take you to the same email account with the same emails, contacts, and other information. Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Subscribe Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit