By: Ryan Johnson

Microsoft now allows you to create custom (or disposable) email addresses based off your standard email address with Plus Addressing. This will allow you to add “tags” to your email address when signing up for newsletters, contact forms, and other online forms. You can use xyz5000+tagname@psu.edu and the email will still be delivered to your personal mailbox. This also works with subdomains of psu.edu.

This is basically a way to create disposable email addresses that would link to your main email, and make it easier to sort through emails because you would have different “plus addresses” that you would add by putting in a plus sign and a suffix to your regular one, and you can assign different addresses for different tasks.

For example, ryanjohnson@psu.edu can use the Plus Addressing feature when signing up for Starbucks rewards as ryanjohnson+starbucks@psu.edu. If a spam email arrives from ryanjohnson@psu.edu, I know Starbucks shared my email address. Or a rule can be created when a message is received from ryanjohnson+starbucks@psu.edu for special processing.

You don’t need to do anything with your Microsoft account to start using this feature. Simply add a “+tag” after your username (can be first.last, alias) and before the “@” sign & emails will arrive in your inbox with the unique address.