Exchange Online Transport: Manage Email, Optics, User Experiences

[KevinShaughnessy]

The Exchange Online Transport team don’t just do plumbing, oh no. They see it as their mission to make sure emails arrive on time, get where they’re supposed to be going and do so with style. They have been busy the last year building some very cool features to turn sending and receiving email from mundane to joyful.

[Satyajit321]

Lots of cool new features and good work team.

One question that I have and I'm sure Microsoft would had debated this internally. Benefits of having plus addresses, I do get its good for newsletter management. But do we all think the spammers are really going to care. Isn't it obvious to just skip\trim the plus part altogether if identify the actual email address and email that instead if they really want to do is spam you.

Even if you say about bulk processing, how difficult will it be to trim that off programmatically. 

There are plus sides to it, and not undermining the overall feature. Maybe SendAs the plus address could next inline.

[lance-aughey]

@KevinShaughnessy 

I'm not sure I understand why plus addressing is a hot topic AND it makes me curious how the inclusion of a + symbol might trick/trip anti-spam. Also, as another has suggested, couldn't someone (hacker, spammer) simply bulk update their obtained/purchased list to remove everything starting with (including) + and up to @?

Exchange hasn't supported plus addressing ever (it's been around for what seems like ever) and now it does...why now?

What am I missing?

Oh, I'm also curious...can you include more than a single + (or any other subsequent) symbol? For example:

user+++123@email.com or user+1+2+3@email.com or user+1*2$3@email.com

[KevinShaughnessy]

@Satyajit321 Agreed of course that's possible and not terribly difficult for a spammer to do. We're not suggesting it's a super powerful anti-spam feature by any means. It's just one of the potential benefits of disposable addresses (that plus addressing enables) that's mentioned in Internet discussions and publications, for example here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_email_address.

[KevinShaughnessy]

@lance-aughey see my previous post RE plus addresses and spammers. 

>>Exchange hasn't supported plus addressing ever (it's been around for what seems like ever) and now it does...why now?

Because over 6,000 O365 customers asked for for us to support it on UserVoice. If you have any particular asks you'd like to see us do, go vote for any existing ones there or post your own. The more votes for it, the more likely we'll do it. 

>>Oh, I'm also curious...can you include more than a single + (or any other subsequent) symbol?

<edited on 10/7/2020 to correct previously misleading statements>

If the original alias includes pluses you can still have those and then add an additional + suffix. But only a single + is supported in the plus suffix.

Examples:

1) Start with user@email.com --> add +++123 as the plus suffix --> user+++123@email.com 

Nope, not supported. 

2) Start with user++@email.com --> add +123 as the plus suffix --> user+++123@email.com

YES - supported. 

3) Start with user@email.com --> add +1+2+3 as the plus suffix --> user+1+2+3@email.com 

Nope - not supported. 

4) Start with user+1+2@email.com --> add +3 as the plus suffix --> user+1+2+3@email.com 

YES - supported.

<end of edits>

>>user+1*2$3@email.com

Start with user@email.com and add +1*2$3 as plus suffix --> Yes. Everything after the one + is RFC-compliant and would be considered the plus suffix. 

Hope this helps. Cheers!

Kevin

[lance-aughey]

@KevinShaughnessy 

Dang, that's a lot of "asks". Honoring the request(s) of users is a good thing, right? I'm very familiar with UserVoice and, forgive me, I oftentimes find myself wondering if voicing such requests actually works...that is, until now! LOL

Thanks for the information!

[KevinShaughnessy]

@lance-aughey my bad! My colleague owns the feature and I asked him for the definitive answer to the above, but he misunderstood thinking we meant the original was "user@email.com" in all cases - in which case you can only add one + in the plus suffix impromptu. But additional pluses ARE supported if they exist in the original alias. They just cannot be included in the plus suffix you add in real-time. So revamping your examples:

If the original alias is user++@email.com then adding "+123" suffix to the local part to produce user+++123@email.com will work. 

If the original alias is user+1+2@email.com then adding "+3" to produce user+1+2+3@email.com will work. 

Assume user@email.com then adding "+1*2$3" to produce user+1*2$3@email.com will work.

Sorry for the mix-up! I've edited my previous post to correct the misleading/false statements for posterity. Hopefully I didn't confuse matters. :)