Sometimes security “features” perplex me. For example, last week I wanted to change my user name on eBay to “utahcorvette.” To my dismay eBay informed me that me user name couldn’t match my email address (my user name @gmail.com).

Supposedly the theory behind this is that eBay is protecting me from spammers. Theese terrible spammers could  add common email extensions (i.e. @gmailcom, @yahoo.com, etc) to my user name  and send me email! As much as I appreciate big brother looking out for me I wanted “utahcorvette” as my use name and I got it.

For those of you who don’t know, Gmail has a pretty cool feature: you can actually add extensions to your email address. Just use the “+” sign after your real user name and then add extra text. For example, let’s say your email was corvetteman@gmail.com and you wanted your eBay user name to be “corvetteman.” You’d simply change your email address with eBay to something like “corvetteman+ebay@gmail.com.” Gmail will ignore anything after the “+” sign (your email will be delivered normally) and eBay will let you use the user name you want (“corvettecam”) since it’s  not the same as your email now. Win!

Sometimes security measures bug me, but if you look hard you can usually find a way around them.

Posted by Cam, July 18, 2011