Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2018 June 6

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June 6[edit]

youtube-disputes+3ncfuutagcay804[edit]

I'm currently in a dispute with YouTube and the email confirmation of receipt of my complaint came from outlandish youtube-disputes+3ncfuutagcay804(at)google.com (naturally not mentioned anywhere). I suspect it to be automated, but 1) it isn't marked as such; 2) there's no notice advising against replying and 3) my reply to that email was not rejected. So is this address a thing worth of waiting for? Brandmeistertalk 20:03, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

My guess is that "+3ncfuutagcay804" is a way for whoever is monitoring that address to track your case. Gmail will ignore the plus sign and everything after it and deliver the email as if it weren't there, which allows the user to filter emails based on the additional string [1]. I would assume Google's in-house email system works similarly. clpo13(talk) 20:20, 6 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The trick with the plus sign and the label is actually broader than gmail, it's a standard defined by RFC5233, see Email_address#Subaddressing for more details. Jahoe (talk) 09:49, 8 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]