During the semester break several changes were made to the way your Penn State "@psu.edu" e-mail addresses work. One seemingly small change is that you may now use a plus (+) sign in your e-mail address. Some of you with friends at Carnegie Mellon University or the University of Pittsburgh may have already seen this and wondered what it does. The interesting thing is that as far as the Internet e-mail programs which route your e-mail from someone else to you are concerned, the plus sign does nothing! Why would you possibly care about this change then? It turns out that because it does nothing, it can perform a very powerful function when used with your e-mail client. By employing the plus followed by text in your e-mail address, you may create an almost limitless number of e-mail addresses-all of which get delivered to you.
An example
By now you may be confused by a "feature" which does absolutely nothing, so an example might be helpful. My friend, Math professor Dr. Xavier Yates Zanzibar (a.k.a. xyz123) teaches Math 20 and Math 497D, edits the Journal of Cool Math, and has a very large family who keeps in touch with him on a daily basis. He lists his e-mail address as xyz123+math20@psu.edu on his Web pages for Math 20, and xyz123+math497d@psu.edu on his Math 497D syllabus. When he communicates with colleagues regarding the Journal of Cool Math, he gives his address as xyz123+coolmath@psu.edu. Finally, his family knows to send him e-mail at xyz123+personal@psu.edu. All of these get delivered to his xyz123 e-mail inbox, but all of them are addressed differently. Dr. Zanzibar can now use his Thunderbird e-mail client (any client which can filter e-mail will work, e.g. Eudora, Thunderbird, or Outlook) to automatically filter his e-mail into different e-mail "inboxes" leaving his regular inbox for everything else. He didn't have to request additional e-mail aliases from the ITS Accounts Office-in fact, he created all these "new" e-mail addresses by himself. As Professor Zanzibar has illustrated, "plussed" e-mail addresses can be used to streamline and improve his communication with students, colleagues, and family members. It requires him to work differently from the way he used to do things. For example, he now looks in his "Cool Math" folder first for professional communications knowing that he will have unread e-mail in that folder on a regular basis.
But wait! That's not all
At this point, I hope that the reader would see the usefulness of a "plussed" e-mail address, but as the pitchman would say, "But wait! That's not all." As I mentioned, the "plussed" e-mail feature allows the creation of many e-mail addresses, so much so that you might have e-mail addresses to waste. And speaking of waste: how many times have you thought to yourself, "I wish I could just make up an e-mail address to register for this software/Web site/ online publication?" ("But wait, that's not all.") With "plussed" e-mail addresses, that's exactly what you can do. I have dozens of them, but I'll use the example of the mythical Penn State Widgets server who asks me to create an account with my e-mail address. For them I register as "leous+widgets@psu.edu" and after that any e-mail I receive from them is addressed to "leous+widgets@psu.edu." I can use this to put this e-mail in a separate e-mail "inbox" or I can send it to the trash without looking at it. The latter is important if you know a Web site will bombard you with e-mail afterward or possibly sell your e-mail address to someone who will. The term for this is creating a "SPAM trap." A SPAM trap e-mail address is one that you can associate with only one purpose (e.g. the Web site sign-up to look at pictures of my new nephew), that suddenly becomes the source of numerous unsolicited e-mail. Because it is unique to that one use, you can better trace from where the SPAMer obtained your e-mail address. Within the last year, I have received about one "Academic Software Deals" e-mail a month from a legitimate company, with less than legitimate e-mail marketing practices. The problem for the company which insisted that I "opted-in" was that they used one of my "plussed" e-mail addresses that I used to subscribe to an academic e-mail list run by a highly respected higher education consortium.
It took us a while, but working with the consortium's technical people, we determined that this company had-against the policy of the list-obtained the e-mail addresses of everyone on the list as of a year ago. Since I was the only one who subscribed with a "plussed" address, we were able to determine how it was done and the company received a "Cease and Desist" order. Unfortunately, I may have given you the impression that this works all the time. More often than not, it doesn't, but SPAM to one of your single use e-mail addresses often helps you understand where the SPAMer obtained your e-mail address and may allow you to filter it out or ignore it. I use a "plussed" address when I reply to USENET or Google Group messages because I know they are often a source of SPAM.
Another application of "plussed' addresses allows you to set the "From:" or "Reply-To:" field on your mail client. Some e-mail clients (e.g. Thunderbird, Eudora, and pine) allow you to set up "roles" or "identities" which you may use to reply or post to lists, or respond to help desk questions, etc. Use of "plussed" addresses come in handy when used with these identities. They can help you better manage your incoming e-mail, keep mail list e-mail separate, and respond to questions so all may view the reply. An argument could be made that some of our automated processes which use e-mail notices (e.g. travel reimbursements, flexible benefit reimbursements) could make effective use of "plussed" addresses.
Confronting the non-believers (or why The New York Times technical staff hates me)
While all this sounds great, there are still many non-believers. Most often they will tell you that a "plussed" address is non-standard. You can tell them that they are part of the standard and that your University supports them. I often reply to them using a "plussed" "From:" address (if they reply to the "plussed" address, you have demonstrated that the address works). Over the years, I've had mixed reactions from the non- believers. On the positive side are Salon.com and CSIonline.com (in fact CSIonline changed their e-mail validator within about 12 hours of becoming aware of the problem). Some of the other Web sites which require registration have not been as accommodating. facebook.com told me, "while we know that is a valid address, we don't support it." By far the most frustrating has been my dealings with The New York Times online, but I pursue it about once every 3-4 months when I try to read an article which requires registration. As the warning says, "your mileage may vary."
In summary, using your Penn State Access Account or Penn State e-mail alias, a plus sign (+), and some meaningful text "tag" will always be delivered to your Penn State e-mail inbox. If you forward your e-mail elsewhere, you need to make sure that site also supports the plus sign in e-mail (Google's gmail does as do some of the other e-mail servers on campus). Many e-mail systems which allow "plussed" addresses, support "tag" text of no more than eight characters, so you probably want to make sure that you do the same. Following these simple guidelines will hopefully make your e-mail a little more efficient and useful. Give it a try- if you liked this article, the author's e-mail is leous+likedit@psu.edu. If you didn't like this article, the author's e-mail is leous+hatedit@psu.edu.