1133 – Try This On Your Email: Tom talks Email Trick

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

In this episode, Tom Antion explains a simple but useful email technique called Gmail plus addressing, also known as sub-addressing.
The basic idea is that if your Gmail address is:
yourname@gmail.com
you can use variations like:
yourname+uline@gmail.com
yourname+photo@gmail.com
yourname+newsletters@gmail.com
All of those still arrive in your regular Gmail inbox, but the added text after the plus sign helps you identify where the email came from or how that address was used.
Main benefits
Tom explains that plus addressing can help you:
1. Track who may have leaked, sold, shared, or exposed your email address
If you give a company a unique address like yourname+company@gmail.com and later receive spam sent to that exact address, you know that address was likely shared, sold, leaked, or compromised.
2. Organize incoming email automatically
Gmail filters can detect the plus-addressed version and automatically apply labels, move messages to folders, star them, forward them, or skip the inbox.
3. Separate categories of email
You could create addresses for newsletters, school-related messages, vendors, shopping sites, or specific companies, making it easier to sort and manage your inbox.
4. Identify spam sources more easily
In Gmail, you can click the small dropdown near your name in an email to see the exact address the message was sent to.
Important limitation
Tom notes that this does not work everywhere. Gmail supports plus addressing reliably, but other email systems such as Outlook, Office 365, ProtonMail, Fastmail, or private/business email systems may or may not support it depending on their configuration. His recommendation is to test it by sending yourself an email using a plus-addressed version of your email.
Promotions mentioned
Tom also promotes:
• Episode 1132 about repurposing YouTube videos into 30–50 pieces of content.
• His automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree.
• His mentor program at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com.
• His school, IMTCVA.org, certified by SCHEV.
• A free AI masterclass available on YouTube.
Core takeaway
Use Gmail plus addressing to create trackable, sortable versions of your main email address. It is an easy way to detect possible email leaks, reduce inbox clutter, and automatically organize messages without creating separate email accounts.

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Episode 1133 – Email Trick
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.
[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1133 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today I'm going to tell you about a cool email trick that's been around for a while, but I don't know, a lot of people just don't know about it. And it'll help you do a lot of cool stuff. All right, let's see. Hope you didn't miss episode 1132. That was reusing and repurposing YouTube videos to get maybe 30 to 50 pieces of content out of it. So check that one out. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to episode number. Repurposing of YouTube was 1132. And guess what? I am finally working on version four of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. You'll still get version 3.0, which most of it is still good, but I'm just adding tons of more stuff for automation to it. So I'm working on that now. And check out my mentor program, greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and my school IMTCVA.org, certified to operate by SCHEV.
[00:01:32] Okay. Some of what I tell you almost absolutely works. Okay. And some of it, you're going to just have to try with your email system. But I'm going to start out with gmail because gmail has a, a part that's been there for a long time. You just probably don't know about it. It's called gmail plus address addressing. Another thing it's called sometime is sub addressing. I'll just use my email as a as a example. So my real gmail address, or one of them is Tomantion@gmail.com. But let's say, you know, I do business with a company called Uline.
[00:02:21] You may get their catalogs in your mail all the time. They sell office supplies and stuff, boxes and all kinds of stuff. So if I used the email with them, like I'm corresponding with Uline Tom, Antion, and then the plus sign and then uline@gmail.com, or maybe it's b h photo where I get camera stuff. Tom Antion the plus sign photo@gmail.com when I send something to photo or Tom Antion the plus sign sweetwater@gmail.com where I get some audio stuff. All right, so why would you do this? Well, number one, you can track who has leaked or sold your email because you might start getting a bunch of spam back to that email address with that company name in it. Now, I'm not saying any of those three did this, all right, but let's say I get a bunch of spam from Tom antion@uline.com or sent to Tom antion@yahoo.com. That means they either sold it, got hacked or leaked it, or shared it with some other company. You know, who knows? It's just the fact that I'm. I know that that email was only used@uline.com. And again, I'm not disparaging them at all. I'm just using them as an example. So you can track who leaked or sold your email. And another thing you can do that's very handy is you can filter your incoming email. So what you do is you make a gmail filter and apply a label that when it sees that particular email coming in, it could be more general, it could be newsletters, it could be. For me, the school, anything really related to my school.
[00:04:29] And once you apply that label, you can tell it to do certain things. You could skip the inbox and just go into a folder about the school. You could put a star on it, you could forward it, you know, whatever you're allowed to do in gmail. Once you label it and catch it on the when it's coming in, it can shovel at different places and light it up, you know, for you and put them all in one place, those kinds of things. So it's good for organizing. Now, does this work everywhere? No. Now let's say you're you you use Outlook or Office 365. Well it depends. I mean, some email systems support it. Their administrator allows it to happen and some don't. Some filter out the plus sign, and so it's not going to work 100% of the time. But in gmail it works really good. I'm not sure if they invented it or what, but but if you do this, then soon you're going to know who spams the most, which companies either leaked or sold your address and where incoming messages are coming from and, you know, organizing for you. Now, how do you see when you get an. And they all go in. Let's say you're using gmail into your gmail inbox, all of them. So how do you see where or which company sent it to you or which company leaked it, or you know, which, where the spam is coming from. Well, there's a little drop down error arrow near your name in gmail, and you can drop it down and it'll show you the exact address that was sent to you.
[00:06:19] See. So that's how you tell. And then if you start seeing, oh, this one company must have sold this because I'm getting all this spam email from to this specific address with their name in it, then you can complain to them, bitch at them, you know, put it on social media, what's happening, you know, embarrass them, whatever, uh, and stick up for yourself. So anyway, that's a little email trick. Like I said, it's been around for a while, but hardly anybody knows that or uses it, but it's a handy thing to do. So your real gmail address, the plus sign, and then whatever you want to track. If it's a specific company, great. If it's general, like, you know, all newsletters go, you make a label and they all go into one folder. So when you get time, you can go look at what newsletters you want to look at. It doesn't junk up your inbox then, you know, or you can put a star on it to say, oh, this is important stuff. If it's from a certain company or a certain place, or if it's about something like my school, see? So all kinds of cool things you can do with this little trick. And it's called the, um, plus gmail plus addressing or sub addressing. And like I said, if you're using some other system, you just got to test and try it and see what happens. You know, send out, uh, send some email to you from some other system with the plus sign and everything and see if it makes it to your inbox in outlook or office 365 or whatever.
[00:07:53] You know, it's like ProtonMail, I think supports it fast mail, there's some other systems, but you just have to test by sending something with the plus sign to you and then see what happens. So but gmail. Yeah. It works. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com. And if you're in it, you get a scholarship to my school IMTCVA.org. We just recertified again for I think the 14th year, right. So, it could really save you a fortune by sending them to some four year college where they're just paying for pizza and beer and not getting any usable skills. So check it out at IMTCVA.org. Certified to operate by SCHEV. That's the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia because it's quality distance learning. And also we're really working on our IMTCVA YouTube channel, which I'll send you some links to that later, but I do have also check the show notes because you really want to check out my, uh, AI masterclass. I did, and it's free on YouTube and you take an hour, you are going to be blown with a capital L away on the things, the simple things you can do without any tech help with AI. All right, that's my story. I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.