Subaddressing
Subaddressing
- October 17, 2021
- Posted by: Nicola Selenu
Some mail services support a tag included in the local-part, such that the address is an alias to a prefix of the local part. For example, the address joeuser+tag@example.com denotes the same delivery address as joeuser@example.com. RFC 5233, refers to this convention as sub-addressing, but it is also known as plus addressing, tagged addressing or mail extensions.
Addresses of this form, using various separators between the base name and the tag, are supported by several email services, including Andrew Project (plus), Runbox (plus), Gmail (plus), Rackspace (plus), Yahoo! Mail Plus (hyphen), Apple’s iCloud (plus), Outlook.com (plus), ProtonMail (plus), Fastmail (plus and Subdomain Addressing), postale.io (plus), Pobox (plus), MeMail (plus), MMDF (equals), Qmail and Courier Mail Server (hyphen). Postfix and Exim allow configuring an arbitrary separator from the legal character set.
The text of the tag may be used to apply filtering, or to create single-use, or disposable email addresses.
In practice, the form validation of some web sites may reject characters such as “+” in an email address – treating them, incorrectly, as invalid characters. This can lead to an incorrect user receiving an e-mail if the “+” is silently stripped by a website without any warning or error messages. For example, an email intended for the user-entered email address foo+bar@example.com could be incorrectly sent to foobar@example.com. In other cases a poor user experience can occur if some parts of a site, such as a user registration page, allow the “+” character whilst other parts, such as a page for unsubscribing from a site’s mailing list, do not.
« Back to Glossary IndexAuthor:Nicola Selenu
Email Service Providers Handbook
The most comprehensive “Handbook of Email Service Providers“!
SPAMASSASSIN RULES
All SpamAssassin rules in one place, EXPLAINED!
SMTP COMMANDS
& REPLY CODES
All SMTP/ESMTP commands and reply codes in one place, EXPLAINED!
Free DNS Tool
Check the DNS records of your domain with our free DNS tool.
Deliverability Glossary
The most comprehensive Email Deliverability and Marketing Glossary!
« Back to Glossary IndexSubaddressing
Some mail services support a tag included in the local-part, such that the address is an alias to a prefix of the local part. For example, the address joeuser+tag@example.com denotes the same delivery address as joeuser@example.com. RFC 5233, refers to this convention as sub-addressing, but it is also known as plus addressing, tagged addressing or mail extensions.
Addresses of this form, using various separators between the base name and the tag, are supported by several email services, including Andrew Project (plus), Runbox (plus), Gmail (plus), Rackspace (plus), Yahoo! Mail Plus (hyphen), Apple’s iCloud (plus), Outlook.com (plus), ProtonMail (plus), Fastmail (plus and Subdomain Addressing), postale.io (plus), Pobox (plus), MeMail (plus), MMDF (equals), Qmail and Courier Mail Server (hyphen). Postfix and Exim allow configuring an arbitrary separator from the legal character set.
The text of the tag may be used to apply filtering, or to create single-use, or disposable email addresses.
In practice, the form validation of some web sites may reject characters such as “+” in an email address – treating them, incorrectly, as invalid characters. This can lead to an incorrect user receiving an e-mail if the “+” is silently stripped by a website without any warning or error messages. For example, an email intended for the user-entered email address foo+bar@example.com could be incorrectly sent to foobar@example.com. In other cases a poor user experience can occur if some parts of a site, such as a user registration page, allow the “+” character whilst other parts, such as a page for unsubscribing from a site’s mailing list, do not.
Author:Nicola Selenu
Email Service Providers Handbook
The most comprehensive “Handbook of Email Service Providers“!
SPAMASSASSIN RULES
All SpamAssassin rules in one place, EXPLAINED!
SMTP COMMANDS
& REPLY CODES
All SMTP/ESMTP commands and reply codes in one place, EXPLAINED!
Free DNS Tool
Check the DNS records of your domain with our free DNS tool.
Deliverability Glossary
The most comprehensive Email Deliverability and Marketing Glossary!