Infinite Mailbox Hack
Need extra email addresses, but don't want to manage new logins or credentials?
Both in the classroom and IT, I’ve run into tons of situations where I need to have a unique email address to sign up for a service or to test account setup, but I don’t want to have to keep track of all of those accounts to manage.
The solution? Dynamic Aliases to the rescue.
In the sake of full disclosure, not all email providers support dynamic aliases. In case you need more incentive to leave Yahoo Mail, consider this a sign. Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud all support it though, so most modern mail providers should have you covered.
How does it work?
Any time you need a unique email address, add a + sign and an alias to the end of the username portion of your email address. For example, If I wanted to sign up for a Netflix account with a dynamic alias, I could use the email address andy+netflix@edtechirl.com, and any mail sent to that address would be delivered to my andy@edtechirl.com email address.
It’s that simple… there’s really nothing else to it.
Another way you can utilize dynamic aliases is for mailbox sorting. For example, if I wanted a throwaway account for my grocery store loyalty cards, I could give out an address like andy+kroger@edtechirl.com, and then I could make a mail flow rule in my email account to send any mail sent to andy+kroger@edtechirl.com to a special junk folder so I could still keep those messages, but I’d never see them come through my inbox. You can take this idea to an extreme, too, and use it for in-depth mailbox organization by using dynamic aliases and mail flow rules to sort bills, newsletters, promotions, or whatever you need into alias specific folders.