For example, sometimes a service will let you sign up with this just fine, but later when you need to do something else (such as password reset) or a phone agent has to enter it... it chokes.

Not to mention after some time passes you may forget what the special bit was and have to fall back to searching your email. Being regimented about the naming system helps, but it's not foolproof.

I'm using this trick less and less nowadays and just entering my plain email to avoid these hassles... especially for things like real life accounts. For possibly shady characters and account email consolidation, still a great trick!

1. register domain at a registrar that supports email catch all (I use namecheap, not affiliated)

2. setup email catch all (https://imgur.com/a/PTlzv) with redirect to your "real" email

3. write email to [email protected] -> get's redirected to your "real" email

This has the big advantage that you can change your real email account (I switched away from GMail two years ago) quite easily, you can track who leaks your address and filter more easily. But be prepared to leave some people stunned, I registered at my electricity provider with [email protected] or at my hairdresser with [email protected]

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-setup-postfix-catch-all-...

The nice thing about running my own email server is I configured it to use . and _ as well as +. [email protected] and [email protected] are pretty much guaranteed to work, and it ends up exactly the same as the +.

A password manager solves this problem

Anyway, this doesn't solve the other technical problems you may hit at some point using this trick.

I'm just giving people a heads up. It's a useful tool for certain things, but it can be overused.

http://penguindreams.org/blog/how-google-and-microsoft-made-...

I've considered moving to Vultr since they block SMTP/25 by default and individual customers have to get it enabled (which seems like it should reduce false positive spam classification as more e-mail providers).