Finally, somebody notices the problem with Gmail “plus” labels

Most e-mail systems these days let you set up “disposable” e-mail
addresses, distinct from your main address which you can happily put
in sign up forms etc, without worrying about them being harvested by
spambots etc, as you can filter them to go straight to trash or
whatever should they abused. This is one example where Yahoo actually
does it better than Google, as they have a separate interface for
setting up and deleting these disposable addresses.
 
Gmail’s way of handling it is to let you append a label to your email
address, for example alex.bowyer+xyzco@googlemail.com would still come
through to my Gmail, but would automatically add the tag xyzco to the
mail, and I could optionally set up filters to treat it specially.
This also has the advantage that should xyzco pass my email address to
a third party, it’s clear who passed my address on.
 
Anyway this is all well and good, but there is a problem. Many (I
would say 40%) of websites that require an email address for sign up,
do not allow + as a valid character in an email address. And there’s
not a lot you can do about this. Use a different email
provider/address, or risk the company spamming you.
 
Which is why I breathed a sigh of relief when I signed up for
Confluence’s personal wiki and saw the alert shown – ok, they haven’t
fixed it yet, but the fact they’ve recognized the problem is a huge
step forward – it’s the first time I’ve seen any company notice this.

Of course, it would be better if Google just created a better way for
us to have disposable email addresses without having to use a
character that half the Internet thinks is illegal and expecting them
to change!