What is Suffixing?
You can add a "-suffix" to the local part of your email address, and the messages will get to you. For example, if your email address is <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>, you will also receive messages sent to <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>, <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>, <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>, and so on. This works automatically and without your having to configure the individual suffix values anywhere. Just about any string will work in the "-suffix" position as long as the results are legal as an email address. You should stick to letters, digits, and underscores to ensure compatibility with any future changes to this service feature.
This message describes a feature called "suffixing" which is available to everyone getting mail via AcceptIO. That includes autoforward users as well as users with mailboxes on our server. In the explanation that follows, we refer to a suffix generically as "-suffix" to emphasize that the hyphen is technically considered to be part of the suffix.
Why would you want to use the suffixing feature? The two main reasons are spam control and selective autoforwarding/autofiling.
Spam Control
It's to give you some control over the proliferation of your email address on the spam mailing lists of the world. Suppose you are looking at a web site and they ask for your email address. Say, it's www.targetrich.com. Instead of giving them your basic email address of <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>, you could instead give them <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>. Messages will still get to you, and if you're interested, you'll be able to tell from the way they're addressed that they came because you gave that email address at www.targetrich.com. Should you suddenly start getting an unending stream of junk mail about quilting bees at that address, you'll at least know why.
Suffixed messages will come to you automatically without your doing anything to your account configuration. Suppose, despite your best efforts, you can't get off the million mailing lists to which www.targetrich.com has sold your email address. What can you do? Easy: you can arrange to reject all incoming mail addressed to you with a specific suffix.
Selective Autoforwarding / Autofiling
If you have some particular suffixed address that you want autoforwarded somewhere or automatically filed into a folder (which might optionally include wherever your unsuffixed message go), you can configure your mailbox settings to make that so. For example, you could arrange that mail sent to <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> would go to your regular mailbox but also go to the text messaging email address on your mobile phone. That gives you a permanent email address for text messaging no matter how many times you change mobile phone numbers.
Getting Started
What do you have to do to start using the "-suffix" feature? Just start giving out suffixed email addresses as in the example above.
In case you are wondering, except for the suffixes singled out for special treatment in your mailbox configuration, AcceptIO does not have records of what suffixes you've used. So, if you feel like someone needs to keep a list, that someone is you. However, AcceptIO staff members have been signing up at web sites by using suffixed addresses for years, and they don't keep track of them. They just use a simple convention (shown in the example above) for picking the suffix, and they don't have much trouble remembering it when they go back to those sites and need it.
NOTE: The user interface for configuring suffixes yourself is not yet available, but the suffixing feature is operational. If you would like to configure any of the actions described above, please contact AcceptIO support.