I wish they'd pick another character besides hte "+". A lot of sites count that as an invalid address.

So myaddress+spam@gmail.com isn't going to do me much good.

I've the same problem: "Invalid Email Address".
But that's a great feature.

Unfortunately, the '+' symbol is ingrained into email itself; there's also almost no other valid symbol which can take its place, since any other sign is valid to be used elsewhere or is already used somewhere wlese in the standard itself.

The '+' is very special and cannot be replaced. It's the very reason your mail can traverse however many networks and arrive at Gmail without a scratch -- and also the very reason those sites *chose* to mark such addresses as invalid.

The simple fact is, those sites are broken, and the maintainers either don't know enough about email to allow those valid symbols, or don't have the initiative to trivially fix their software to allow for the infixed +something.

It's the difference between apathy and ignorance, right there.

Complain bitterly, loudly and often. Give them a reason to claw their way into the world of complete standards compliance and toil like the rest of us. Like my dog, some organizations also need as complete and consistent reinforcement as possible so as to ensure they can stop messing on our internet. The moment you choose to offer a valid email address instead of a this+that one, you're validating their bad behaviour; may as well give Bob the Dog a cookie.

'lunchbox' is right - the '+' is indeed valid, according to the official specification. Whether or not certain websites want to adopt it properly is up to them, I guess...

But, it's a great tool for GMail, nonetheless!

If the + doesn't work, try Mailinator (http://www.mailinator.com/mailinator/index.jsp). Just when you sign up make up a random email (ex: spamisham@mailinator.com) with mailinator and then go to the Mailinator website and check your email there. It's real handy; you can make up an address anytime you want however so may times you want it. And you don't need to sign up =)

The best thing to use is Spam Gourmet :)

Ive been using it for years. When you sign up, you generate a username and give them your real email address. All you have to do now is generate your "disposable email address".

Ex. Say you are signing up for a newsletter at Handyman.com. Your spamgourmet username is Pacman.

handyman.5.pacman@spamgourmet.com

5 is the max # of emails you want to receive from Handyman.com

This is similar to the Yahoo! Mail version. Only you can do this one on the fly. With Yahoo! you have to setup a Disposable Email Address for each on of these, which can be very time consuming and annoying. Not to mention hard to keep up with.

Personally the Gmail one works better for the amount of random crud I sign up for.

I've got gmail hosting for my domain, but trick doesn't seem to work for addresses that gmail hosts.

has to be a @gmail.com address

One thing I stumbled upon by accident is that periods are irrelevant in the first part of a Gamil address. I accidentally left the period out when sending something to my first.last Gmail address one day, and to my surprise it got there just the same! I played with it a little more and found out that I can put a period anywhere I want or omit it and I'll still receive the message.

Since so many sites count addresses with a + as invalid, I've started using a variant of my address with a period in a wierd place (like fir.stlast) when registering on websites. Anytime I get a message addressed to that variant, a filter sends it to the trash.

One thing I stumbled upon by accident is that periods are irrelevant in the first part of a Gamil address. I accidentally left the period out when sending something to my first.last Gmail address one day, and to my surprise it got there just the same! I played with it a little more and found out that I can put a period anywhere I want or omit it and I'll still receive the message.

Since so many sites count addresses with a + as invalid, I've started using a variant of my address with a period in a wierd place (like fir.stlast) when registering on websites. Anytime I get a message addressed to that variant, a filter sends it to the trash.