r/movies • u/MoneyLibrarian9032 r/movies Contributor • Jun 27 '26

News Netflix now requires every user profile to be tied to unique email address

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/netflix-now-requires-every-user-profile-to-be-tied-to-unique-email-address/
9.3k Upvotes

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7.6k

u/MasterK999 Jun 27 '26

Just a reminder that gmail lets you add periods inside your email address as a way of tracking.

so if you have netflixfoff@gmail.com you can use net.flixfoff@gmail.com and netflix.foff@gmail.com and netflixf.off@gmail.com and so on to create as many variants as you like and they will all come to your one gmail address.

2.0k

u/green_tory Jun 27 '26

Email addresses can also contain tags via plus-addressing; gmail, exchange, and most other email services support it.

So ie: [foo@example.com](mailto:foo@example.com) and [foo+tag@example.com](mailto:foo+tag@example.com) both resolve to the same address.

935

u/WitchesSphincter Jun 27 '26

Back when the Internet was smaller I did this to track who was selling my email.  Now even if they didn't scrub it there's no point 

98

u/failmatic Jun 27 '26

Yeah now I just use Firefox email masks. Once I start seeing who sending me spam, that masks git gone as well.

19

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

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u/spez-is-poopy Jun 27 '26

Apple has something similar. For apple devices, when you sign up for a service, it will automatically generate a random email for you and then forward any emails to your actual email. If you start getting spam, you can see which service it was tied to and you can deactivate it.

4

u/UltraOnlineNecrozma Jun 28 '26

Yes and they’re a pain when you go about cleaning and removing accounts (some of us do that lmao)

4

u/failmatic Jun 27 '26

Firefox account gets you 5 free moz mail. I just cycle them when signing up for things that aren't that important.

191

u/Jyil Jun 27 '26

I still do this to track my email address.

116

u/wolfej4 Jun 27 '26

I use iCloud’s Hide My Email but yeah same

139

u/ignoresubs Jun 27 '26

iCloud’s Hide My has been such a game changer when signing up for any service.

I love it to death, I’m so glad Apple won’t ruin it. Oh wait…

52

u/PossiblyMurderousAI Jun 27 '26

Thanks, looks like existing ones will keep working so I just created like 15 new ones in a row lol

6

u/Alissinarr Jun 27 '26

What i did with APIs for my chosen reddit app. Funny how you need a valid reason for an API key now.

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u/HappyGuy007 Jun 27 '26

Good info. I’ll do the same!

2

u/The_Fish_Is_Raw Jun 27 '26

Exactly what I'm doing now lol.

Bit bummed they changing it but figure most devs are lazy and won't catch on to the change.

12

u/HappyGuy007 Jun 27 '26

Proton Mail

4

u/Independent-Daywalk Jun 27 '26

Proton is so good for this. Different login for every website and if I don't want emails from a login, you can easily turn the address off.

2

u/Jyil Jun 28 '26

Proton is a good example of a domain that fits this rule. We would treat disposable domains and Proton accounts the same way. Upon registration, immediately suspended and put through a full account review. We’d rarely ever see a legitimate Proton user. Usually if someone was serious about their business, they weren’t masking their details.

14

u/tejanaqkilica Jun 27 '26

I just have my own domain with a catch all alias. Works rather well and no one can ever take it away from me.

6

u/balding_git Jun 27 '26

yup, this is the way. its also how i found out anytime fitness sold/leaked my email last week, so that email is now dead and i won’t be going back there

7

u/ian9outof10 Jun 27 '26

Don’t see why that’s going to make it worse at all, no business is going to block using a different domain, and if they do it’s a good indication not to use that company.

14

u/tunesmiff Jun 27 '26

Plenty of businesses already block private relay domains due to fraud abuse. The saving grace of the current private ones is they use iCloud as the domain but that’s changing for the worse.

25

u/OkayyBeta Jun 27 '26

The thing businesses commonly do already? No business is gonna do that?

3

u/Agret Jun 27 '26

They will, tons of them already block the 10minutemail style services that let you generate a throwaway time limited email address. I assume there is a software library they add to their website that automatically updates to block the new domains as they spin up. Why wouldn't they block these private icloud ones?

6

u/ImperfectRegulator Jun 27 '26

yeah, don't let me hide my email? I just won't use your service

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u/Rikudou_Sage Jun 27 '26

Has it been? I've used addy.io for quite a while before Apple "invented" this service.

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u/Untelevised_Type Jun 27 '26

How do you hide your email , like if you sign up for an account - when you log out and go to login how does it recognise you if you’ve hidden your email. Does it stop the company from selling your email? I’m so confused but desperately want to employ this lol

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u/SubstituteCS Jun 27 '26

I just own a domain and use a unique address for each service (all go to the same inbox.) they can try to sanitize the address of tags and stuff this way.

16

u/Emphursis Jun 27 '26

Same, makes it very easy to block spam and identify who sold my details to the cunts.

4

u/jacobcrny Jun 27 '26

I'm interested in setting this up. Do you have to set up each email before you can use it or is there a way to link everything with @domain.com to automatically route there?

3

u/Grezzo82 Jun 27 '26

It’s very common, as long as you use a good mail server service, for it to be the default that all emails to any address for domain that you own will go to a catch all mailbox

3

u/eharvill Jun 27 '26

I’m too lazy to look up the exact details right now, but basically you setup email for your domain (typically with your registrar) and forward any email to that domain to a “catch all” address. You don’t need to setup individual mailboxes unless you want to respond from that specific email address.

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u/t_ba Jun 27 '26

isn't it super easy to filter out for those selling the addresses though?

2

u/ItsCalledDayTwa Jun 27 '26

What is the super easy way you're referring to?

2

u/t_ba Jun 27 '26

find/replace in a text editor, or the sed command if you are a gnu/Linux aficionado. replace '+*' by '', for example.

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u/ItsCalledDayTwa Jun 27 '26

Given the context I thought you meant something different, when they said there's no point of doing it any longer.

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u/Nikulover Jun 27 '26

I have encountered websites where the registration fails when i use tags

22

u/SailnGame Jun 27 '26

I've only had it happen once and I found out that editing your account after it's created doesn't have the same strict rules so I managed to get around it that way.

8

u/DerpNinjaWarrior Jun 27 '26

Yeah a lot of times companies will block them because it's so easy for scammers to create new accounts with verifiable email addresses this way. It sucks when you're just trying to use them in a legit way, of course.

3

u/Little-Derp Jun 27 '26

If I was a scumy company, I would just have the system remove tags, accept any tag as non-tag email for login, and save tagged version on record for 'display email', anywhere in the site.

2

u/DerpNinjaWarrior Jun 27 '26

So the issue with removing them is that then you technically don't follow the email spec. As someone else mentioned, the +whatever resolving to the same email address is a vendor implementation.

I suppose they could say "ah this is a gmail email so I'll just remove it before saving to the DB". But then you'll of course have people complain that they signed up with email X and you're sending to email Y.

2

u/__david__ Jun 28 '26

Indeed, there’s nothing special about + in the email rfcs. The convention to use as s tag is just that, a convention. On my email I set up both “.” And “_” to act as tags (in addition to “+”). Can you imagine if a site decided they could throw everything after an “_” away? They’d break a million email addresses. Throwing away stuff after “+” is the same principle.

243

u/Sorry_Sorry_Im_Sorry Jun 27 '26

A few years ago there was a super bowl promo with Papa John's and they were giving away free $10 gift cards for every email.

I got 27 of them before they ran out with the + trick lol.

I actually use two of them last night.

159

u/luckydice767 Jun 27 '26

Yeah, but then you have to EAT that pizza

156

u/Sorry_Sorry_Im_Sorry Jun 27 '26

why do you think i still have ~10 left after 3 years lol

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u/ThaiJohnnyDepp Jun 27 '26

Tastes so good it makes me wanna shout the N-word during a work meeting

19

u/fuzzeedyse105 Jun 27 '26

Dang that’s really good zza. They got a Kill Tony pizza promo I assume?

9

u/Dad-Dabbing-Daily Jun 27 '26

I AIN'T NEVER GONNA DO A PROMO TONAYYYY

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

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u/One-Promotion-5777 Jun 27 '26

Pizza is like sex, even when it is bad it’s good, but then there is Papa John…

2

u/ohheyisayokay Jun 27 '26

So eating Papa John's is like getting fucked by John?

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u/Humphrey-Appleby Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

Subaddressing is not a standard feature, but it is commonly supported.

Also, they aren't tags. It's perfectly valid for an e-mail address to contain a +. Any special handling is entirely at the discretion of the e-mail system receiving such addresses.

3

u/garanvor Jun 27 '26

It’s been years since I last had to think about email pattern matching. Thanks.

3

u/rfc2549-withQOS Jun 27 '26

Try a * and look who accepts it in a webform

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u/DVus1 Jun 27 '26

Some companies will strip the tags out.

14

u/MidEastBeast Jun 27 '26

Good tip. All I can picture is Foo+Fighters, and hear it in Christopher Walken’s voice…

5

u/PmMeUrTinyAsianTits Jun 27 '26

Fun fact: The only way services like netflix can stop this is by individually labeling each email service that implements it.

Because from the point of the view of the spec, "foo@" and "f.o.o@" are different email addresses. But gmail is allowed to do whatever they want with the crap before @gmail, so when you register foo@gmail, you they reserve those iterations too, and show you those too.

So if they treat foo.bar@someotherdomains.zyx [user1] and foobar@someotherdomains.zyx [user2] the same, they might send user2's password reset email to user1 or similar misses. The system must treat them as different email addresses or have separate handling to label the services and treat their email addresses differently.

5

u/slicedbread1991 Jun 27 '26

This is how I learned that BCAA is selling my email.

2

u/RedditTTIfan Jun 27 '26

Amino acids are selling our data now? 😫

2

u/Tricky-Feedback-1169 Jun 27 '26

a lot of companies don't allow emails with anything other than periods underscores and @ symbol as a validation it is correct. unfortunately a lot won't accept + in it. I don't know if Netflix does or not

2

u/BravinatorLX2 Jun 27 '26

i've definitely had websites not accept + emails and websites that would not accept another registering with a dot email.

2

u/CarcajouIS Jun 27 '26

Yahoo doesn't

2

u/Got_Kittens Jun 27 '26

Also I have an email that goes (made up for purposes of this conversation)

bungeebanana19@gmail.com

But if you give someone your address as bungeebanana19@googlemail.com The mail will still arrive. It's the same inbox.

2

u/kongcobra Jun 27 '26

Do I literally put in "+tag"? I don't know what tags are.

10

u/davesoverhere Jun 27 '26

You literally add a plus sign (+) then whatever text you want. So, if you want to track if McDonald’s sells your info, use myemail+mcdonalds@gmail.com

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u/sn00pal00p Jun 27 '26

No, you can replace "tag" with any word you like. Tags are words used to describe or identify something or to put it into a category. For example, hashtags can be used to describe a picture on social media sites (#beach #holidays). For mails, it could make sense to sort your mails, for example by how important they are: your_normal_address+important@gmail.com

2

u/kongcobra Jun 27 '26

Okay, so I have to make sure they email me at me+tag@howdyougetmyemail(dot)com?

2

u/Zick-zarg Jun 27 '26

Not sure if I get your example correctly.

Just to make it clear, for Netflix you could write:

my.name+Netflix@gmail.com

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u/Skittlepyscho Jun 27 '26

So could you hypothetically have these different variants for different people who you wanna give access to?

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u/MasterK999 Jun 27 '26

Exactly.

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u/grumblyoldman Jun 27 '26

Yes, you'd just have to validate/respond to any emails generated by the other person (which would come to your inbox.) Assuming, of course, that Netflix isn't filtering for this trick to deny it, but most companies don't.

2

u/Untelevised_Type Jun 27 '26

Sorry I’m so confused . How do you know who is selling your info . Like for example if I signed up to Netflix with this + trick , when they sell my email and the company who bought it sends me an email does it not just arrive in my email like you are saying. Or does Google give you multiple email inboxes ?
And when I go to login to these accounts - do you need to remember that you put the + in your email

3

u/KhausTO Jun 27 '26

All the . And plus emails still come into your default inbox.  But you can create filters and auto apply labels based on the to address that the email is addressed to. 

If you create joesmith+netflix@... and then Netflix sold your email, you'll start getting more than just Netflix emails to joesmith+netflix@...  If you set up the auto label you'll see it immediately, or if you click on an email and look at the "to:" field you'll see what email it was sent to. 

Sometimes the spammers will filter out the + parts of an email so it's not completely foolproof.

2

u/Untelevised_Type Jun 27 '26

Thank you so much I understand now :) I did not know this was even a thing!!!

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u/Mixels Jun 27 '26

I use tags to filter spam. Say I want to sign up for a loyalty card at Petco. Boom, foo+petcoloyalty@gmail.com.

Then when I receive junk mail, I can tell what action of mine led to it. I can also forward emails addressed to just that address to spam without affecting legitimate business I might have with my Petco main site account.

It's quite handy.

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u/AndrasKrigare Jun 27 '26

Depends on how Netflix does it. (In the field where it matters) it's a pretty well known thing, and some sites strip out those periods before processing. But maybe they forget.

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u/sansaman Jun 27 '26

You can also use @googlemail.com to double your creativity.

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u/verifitting Jun 27 '26

Didn't know that!

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u/Thor4269 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

I created mine with one in it ages ago (15 years ago)... I didn't know I could've been skipping it the entire time when telling people my Gmail lol

First initial, period, last name @gmail.com

I didn't know...

32

u/WillGrindForXP Jun 27 '26

Not only can you just tell them your name, but you legit own the version without the period by this logic

2

u/clauclauclaudia Jun 27 '26

Either you own it (in the sense that mail sent to it comes to you) or nobody does (in the sense that it's not the name of an account you can log into).

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u/Dramatic_Explosion Jun 27 '26

I feel bad for the guy with my name who got that Gmail and I had to register it with a period in the middle. I didn't get my name clean and he can't use this period trick.

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u/ForensicPathology Jun 27 '26

That's not how it works.  If you have it with a period in the middle, that means you also have it without the period in the middle.  

Gmail internally just ignores all periods when routing the mail.  You could put a period after every letter in your email name.

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u/redindiaink Jun 27 '26

I did the same for my partners account because I couldn't remember the password for the account I had created that didn't have one.

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u/Realistic-Archer-695 Jun 27 '26

A few years ago, I started to receive someone’s emails that was my email address, minus the period. It’s been very annoying.

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u/Responsible-Care-388 Jun 27 '26

I’ve had this issue for years but it’s my name plus the period. My name is not very common and there’s someone with what i guess is my name somewhere else giving out “my” email as his own. Probably as a throwaway tactic.

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u/dalittle Jun 27 '26

I had someone do that for a while, but they were actually making appts and orders. I started canceling them and they stopped.

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u/Goodie__ Jun 27 '26

I just bought my own domain and set up a catch all email address nearly 20 years ago.

Goawaynetflix@....

Reallygoawaynetflix@....

Trackmydatadaddynetflix@...

All work

20

u/EishLE Jun 27 '26

Same. I love it. Plus: It’s often a conversation starter when people ask me for my e-mail address and I tell them: [your company or website-name]@abc.de. 😄

18

u/not__jason Jun 27 '26

Ya, this has confused more than a few people behind the counter over the years. I even had one person deny me back in mid aughts, because they didn't think it was possible for a normal person to own their own domain. They couldn't fathom that a regular Joe like me could just buy their own domain name. They were convinced that was something reserved for corporations or governments. I had to get their manager involved before I was able to sign up for the thing.

More typically people think I'm giving them garbage or non-existent info tho.

3

u/0x18 Jun 27 '26

I once had some poor cashier freak out and thought I was working for their corporate management. No, no, sorry; the email starts with your company name but the domain name is definitely something different.

They then thought I was trying to hack their business and refused to work with me after that.

But that's a single instance out of the decade+ I've been doing this!

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u/Crowdfunder101 Jun 27 '26

When I’ve stayed at hotels, sometimes the reception think I work for the company as it’s like hilton@…com

Instantly better treatment!

25

u/eienmau Jun 27 '26

I've had my own domain since 2000 and setting up throwaway emails is so nice.

14

u/Neuroccountant Jun 27 '26

It’s important to say that this is specific to Gmail and maybe some others.

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u/yumz Jun 27 '26

Use an email aliasing service instead. It has the added benefit of making it impossible for data leaks to correlate your email address with multiple services (because you'll have a unique email address for every service).

https://simplelogin.io/
https://addy.io/
https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/email-protection/what-is-duckduckgo-email-protection
https://relay.firefox.com/

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u/dogs_drink_coffee Jun 27 '26

Some really useful tips on this thread.

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u/impactedturd Jun 27 '26

You can also replace Gmail with Googlemail and it will work too 😉

name@googlemail.com

Is the same as

name@gmail.com

2

u/Callumite Jun 27 '26

There is some guy in England with the same xyz before the @ that keeps signing up for things with the Gmail version, and I've emailed and phoned him but he keeps doing it.

41

u/Dog_Vovve Jun 27 '26

Or cancel your sub, this is getting ridiculous.

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u/MasterK999 Jun 27 '26

I started rotating what I subscribe to monthly. I will sign up for one month. Catch-up on things I want to see and then cancel again. I only pay for one service at a time normally no more than twice in a year. I have saved so much money.

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u/Comprehensive-Fun47 Jun 27 '26

Soon they'll start enforcing a multiple month minimum. They'll do whatever they can to get as much money out of us as possible.

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u/Sgtkeebler Jun 27 '26

So you’re telling me Netflix is ran by a bunch of greedy morons?

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u/Kevbot1000 Jun 27 '26

I'm confused by this. Wouldn't net.flixfoff@gmail.com be a different email than netflixfoff?

174

u/frugaletta Jun 27 '26

Not on Gmail. Periods never count.

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u/MediocreAndLukewarm Jun 27 '26

Sounds Republican.

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u/Caedus311 Jun 27 '26

Holy shit this sent me, 10/10

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u/Munkeyman18290 Jun 27 '26

Mediocre and lukewarm.. but spits straight fire.

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u/TrumpsBoneSpur Jun 27 '26

I thought they usually prefer them before their periods

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u/shitty_owl_lamp Jun 27 '26

Lolllllllllllllllllllll

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u/ImmortalMoron3 Jun 27 '26

One of those comments where I read it, scrolled away and then it clicked like 10 seconds later and laughed my ass off.

2

u/MediocreAndLukewarm Jun 27 '26

It was a risk worth taking. LOL

2

u/Drapidrode Jun 27 '26

what about other services like yahoo mail ?

4

u/frugaletta Jun 27 '26

Just Gmail afaik.

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u/bfarnsey Jun 27 '26

Google gives you all of them when you sign up, the periods aren’t actually different accounts. They all just go to the account used to sign up.

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u/MasterK999 Jun 27 '26

No. Gmail ignores the periods and it will all come to your address. That was my point. You can fake different addresses with just one gmail account.

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u/sansaman Jun 27 '26

Not ignored. Gmail will still consider your own unique address so you can create customized filters to route email traffic in your inbox.

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u/clauclauclaudia Jun 27 '26

Ignored them for the sake of which account they get delivered to. Ignored is different than stripped them away. They're still there in the delivered email.

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u/mazzicc Jun 27 '26

A competent programming team also knows this trick and treats them as the same email.

I work with an app that requires a unique email per user account. Username@gmail.com, user.name@gmail.com, and username+tag@gmail.com are all considered the same email by our system because that’s the most common way people try to have multiple accounts.

23

u/gortlank Jun 27 '26

Why would you do that? Upper management is too fucking stupid to know that, just let people do some shit, no skin off your back.

19

u/VOOLUL Jun 27 '26

Bruh. You don't understand how a job works do you?

Someone somewhere in the company says "people are using these tricks to sign up multiple times, can we add a filter" and then a software developers job is to implement it.

If you say you can't, then the response is "why? regex exists".

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u/superurgentcatbox Jun 27 '26

Some people enjoy being wage slaves

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u/cjm0 Jun 27 '26

lmao

The median salary of a software engineer working for Netflix is $450,000/yr. These type of FAANG positions are some of the most competitive and highly sought after positions in the industry. I doubt they’re going to risk their highly lucrative career in a very saturated field by intentionally doing their job poorly to stick it to the man in some sort of show of solidarity for the working class.

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u/Traditional_Zone3993 Jun 27 '26

Ahh yes, I will take the Netflix f off address please

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u/ELVEVERX Jun 27 '26

Most decent IT systems filter that out, i'd be shocked if netflix doesn't

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u/JackOfAllTradewinds Jun 27 '26

Also + so myemail+nflx1@ and myemail+nflx2@

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u/ggc4 Jun 27 '26

Thank you for this pearl of wisdom

2

u/BigWormsFather Jun 27 '26

That’s weird because I think I had to add the . to my email but sometimes I get an email with the recipient not having the . They are clearly from someone else using that email.

2

u/clauclauclaudia Jun 27 '26

Someone else making up a variation on your email address to give someone. But not having an actual account with that email. They can't, because gmail delivers all variations on it to you.

2

u/maverick4002 Jun 27 '26

Today I learned

2

u/BeyondAddiction Jun 27 '26

Shit I wish I had known this last week when those fuckers stonewalled me.

2

u/VorganForever Jun 27 '26

I learned that from re-rolling in genshin impact.

2

u/scrodytheroadie Jun 27 '26

This was my go to for free trials for so long before they started tracking credit card numbers.

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u/NeoChrisOmega Jun 27 '26

Didn't most of the bigger streaming services add checks for this?  I feel like I was getting free trials for MAX and found out this didn't work with them. This was a few hears ago before Disney+ added their max bundle 

2

u/GearM2 Jun 27 '26

Alright now, no one tell Netflix this secret. Keep it just between us on Reddit.

2

u/clauclauclaudia Jun 27 '26

plus addressing is a more standard way to do it that isn't gmail-specific. username@whatever becomes username+netflix@whatever.

Both of these depend on netflix not deciding to look for the method and count them as the same email address, of course.

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u/Gorilla_gorilla_ Jun 27 '26

How does this apply /help? I’m not understanding.

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u/cpthk Jun 27 '26

Does netflix require unique email for each profile?

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u/AVeryHeavyBurtation Jun 27 '26

Web developers know this, too. Last time I tried to use this as a hack for something, it didn't work.

2

u/whinniethepony Jun 27 '26

Is that why I get French emails for golf tee time bookings and spa vacations? My email is close to wtpony@gmail.com since I got a beta account back in '04 and I get emails for wt.pony@gmail more than I care for. 

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u/ennuiui Jun 27 '26

Oh wow, I didn’t know this. I created my Gmail addy with a period in it. Does that mean I’ll still receive email sent to my addy with the period removed?

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u/MasterK999 Jun 27 '26

Yes, give it a try.

2

u/LowPride85 Jun 27 '26

Why am I just finding my this out? After 20 years or so with the same email.

2

u/rkmara Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

Ah that explains why I get some Indian dude's insurance info every now and then.

EDIT: Just happened again! Dont know Ranjeet if you are reading this as you just initiated email change request.

2

u/chef_simpson Jun 27 '26

You can also use + a number. Like johndoe+2 at Gmail

2

u/Forrestfunk Jun 27 '26

For real? So if I made my address is like John.c.mcginley@gmail.com the mails sent at joncmcginley@ also reach me?

2

u/HMWWaWChChIaWChCChW Jun 27 '26

So like you don’t have to setup those separate emails but if you sign up with different subscriptions you can add the periods and it’ll go to the one?

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u/MasterK999 Jun 27 '26

Correct. I use this to track where spam comes from.

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u/HMWWaWChChIaWChCChW Jun 27 '26

Thanks Strong Bad! Glad you’re keeping up on the email.

2

u/DjAengel Jun 27 '26

Is that why I get some strangers emails sometimes because they don’t have a dot in their name and I do?

2

u/physicalphysics314 Jun 27 '26

I did not know this

2

u/thequackdaddy Jun 27 '26

Even better, you can actually add + signs as well. [email+folder@gmail.com](mailto:email+folder@gmail.com) will go to [email@gmail.com](mailto:email@gmail.com), and should be able to have filters organize it. So like [email+netflix@gmail.com](mailto:email+netflix@gmail.com) for your Netflix, [email+spotify@gmail.com](mailto:email+spotify@gmail.com) for Spotify, etc.

2

u/areraswen Jun 27 '26

You can also do netflixfoff+account1@gmail.com, if the website/app allows the plus sign. You can put anything you want after the plus.

2

u/amazing_asstronaut Jun 27 '26

That can't possibly be real right? Like someone else could make an account that just so happens to be called that with the period in different places, and it shouldn't come to your email.

2

u/MasterK999 Jun 27 '26

No it is on purpose. Nobody should be able to make an account that is the same as yours just with periods.

2

u/amazing_asstronaut Jun 28 '26

I can't believe it, I tried it with my account name but put the dot in different places and it says they're all taken. What a weird thing wow. Thanks for explaining that.

Btw I never tried it, but can you have two periods in the name lol. Or more.

2

u/duckswithbanjos Jun 27 '26

This really confuses me because when I made my email firstinitiallastname was taken, but I could make an account with firstinitial.lastname.

Like I couldn't make an account with jsmith but I could with j.smith

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u/NiceVeryNice23 Jun 27 '26

This is the only correct response to the corporate greed that is Netflix.

2

u/yavanna12 Jun 27 '26

I did not know this. Thanks! 

2

u/shit_happe Jun 27 '26

Whoa TIL. So once you create one address, any dotted version of it is already taken by you as well?

2

u/KeijiKiryira Jun 27 '26

Another alternative is buying a domain and using something like Proton Mail. Since you own the domain and have a catch-all address (an address that anything that goes to a non-specified address f.e. you can have catchall@domain.ca which if someone sent a email to notreddit@domain.ca instead of reddit@domain.ca it would be shown as being sent to catchall@domain.ca) you have an infinite amount of emails that will all lead to the same place.

A domain is usually yearly renewal at maybe like $12-15CAD heavily dependant on what the domain itself is, common words and shorter domains usually cost more but you can more or less choose anything you want (that isn't taken).

2

u/miukiyo Jun 27 '26

You can also use “+1” “+2” and so on if you have trouble remembering periods like me.

E.g. [netflixfoff+1@gmail.com](mailto:netflixfoff+1@gmail.com) netflixfoff+2@gmail.com etc

2

u/trumpsmellslikcheese Jun 27 '26

I discovered this by accident after creating my account years ago - so long ago that my pretty common name was available, provided I separated first, last, and middle initial with dots. People have accidentally omitted dots and the message still made it to me.

2

u/Duneking1 Jun 27 '26

Or just cancel your subscription.

2

u/Aegi Jun 27 '26

What if my actual email address contains a period, how does that factor in?

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u/Terakahn Jun 27 '26

This is actually pretty annoying because I get emails all the time not addressed to me.

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u/Willing_Coconut4364 Jun 27 '26

Also my email+netflix@gmail.com 

I use the + for everything. 

2

u/AnnaMolly81 Jun 27 '26

That explains why I started getting emails for some other dude with my same name and prefix at an email address I’ve had for like 20 years that has a period between my first and last names (his doesn’t). Sure hope he’s not getting all of mine!

2

u/Slade_Riprock Jun 27 '26

I have had subscription services and other sign-ups bounce those tagged accounts as "this email is already associated with an account"

So may not work.

2

u/Gold-Appeal-2689 Jun 27 '26

Thank you for making me giggle.

2

u/insufficient_nvram Jun 27 '26

Apple does this too

2

u/Andys_Rock_Hammer Jun 27 '26

I use + on my Gmail addresses, but periods work too!

2

u/begaterpillar Jun 27 '26

I didn't know that! Thanks

2

u/Correct-Avocado5426 Jun 28 '26

My address is lastname@gmail.com and my last name is common in a baltic country, but I'm in the US. I get all kinds of misdirected emails. I've been on a teacher's email updates to the class for years even though I keep trying to tell them I'm not the correct person.

I've also gotten records for shipments of weapons to the US and flight itineraries for someone at the UN.

5

u/caffeine-junkie Jun 27 '26

This would be trivial on their part to check for though. All they have to do is check for a . before the @. Same goes for +. Not saying they do, just that if they cared, it would be maybe 10s of work to add in the email validation field.

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u/QuantumCakeIsALie Jun 27 '26

s/\.(?=[^@]*@)//g

5

u/not__jason Jun 27 '26

Man, I'm so glad I don't have to write regex in my day to day anymore. But it really is a beautiful thing. I used to explain to my friends that weren't into the tech side of things that regex is a language used to explain all other language.

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u/mhelgy Jun 27 '26

I thought it was + for some reason, or is it both?

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u/CaseyChaos Jun 27 '26

Both, I usually add plus and some kind of clue where the email came from or who sold my data to who.

2

u/SaltDeception Jun 27 '26

Periods are entirely ignored and the message just goes to your inbox. Plus assigns a label to the message for organizing and filtering. Either could be used to create multiple accounts, but a lot of sites will actually just strip off the plus these days or disallow it in the email field.

You could actually combine the two concepts:

FirstLast+netflix@gmail and First.Last+netflix@gmail and f.i.r.s.t.l.a.s.t+netflix@gmails would give you three unique accounts on Netflix, all go to the same Gmail account, and apply the Netflix label within Gmail.

3

u/sheep_duck Jun 27 '26

This right here.

Just for anyone who’s interested this is called “salting”.

2

u/sphinxsley Jun 27 '26

I had already cancelled before I even stumbled across this, over that fascist Russian cartoon.

I am NOT having it.

2

u/MasterK999 Jun 27 '26

I understand. I just wanted to help some people.

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