You actually get more address variations than just “yourusername@gmail.com,” all of which get delivered to you. You can put a plus (”+”) sign and any combination of words or numbers after your name, like changing hikingfan@gmail.com to hikingfan+mailinglists@gmail.com or hikingfan+junk@gmail.com. Then you can easily add a filter to label and/or archive messages sent to the variations.

This is brilliant for finding the source of your spam. If you sign up for an account with a website, and you’re unsure about their spam policy, then use something like yourusername+sourcewebsite@gmail.com. All the mail will still come to you, but if you start getting spammed to that address, then you know who gave it out. And it’s easy to filter mails from facebook, youtube etc (yourusername+facebook@gmail.com).

It got me thinking about the nature of the web, as a publishing media. It’s common knowledge that the internet is free, accessible and un-censored (to a level), meaning more voices, less coverups and what seems like a never ending stream of opinion and content.

The downside, of course, being the fact that a large amount of these voices and opinions are coming from complete ‘tards who really have nothing to say, but will try anyway. Yes, a gross stereotype and over-simplification of the situation.

Out of all the content on the web, there will always be the hater, troll inducing no sense …. shit.

But luckily the rest is gold, and the more shit there is the more value there is in the gold. Hmm, I have a feeling this post is part of the 98%. God bless the free web.