We all know that everyone and his cat want our private data. Email addresses and phone numbers are among the most popular items the data grifters want. Personally, I like to know who gave away my mail addresses. Proton Mail has a nice feature that can make this happen.

If you create an email address say xyz@example.net, you can add as many aliases as you like by simply adding +<alias> to the name part of the address. If you put in the name of the company that wanted your address, it’s easy to tell where the spam originates or who lost or sold your address.

xyz+acme-groceries@example.net will for instance automatically work, and you can always check any spam for the recipient. Well, at least until the spammers get smart enough to cut away the alias. As I keep saying, this is why we can’t have nice things.