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Sadly, there is software and websites out there that does not recognize the plus character as a valid character in e-mail addresses.
Every time I've tried to use this trick the email validation rejected the + sign.
I use this pattern religiously (I've learned some interesting things about who gives my email address to whom), and the problem has become a lot less prevalent over the last year or two, but it's still an issue in some places. Until recently, even Facebook and Dice.com wouldn't accept a '+', and while bn.com would accept it, the Barnes and Noble e-reader iPhone application wouldn't (which they've since fixed; I'm still absolutely floored by the amazing customer service experience I had with B&N as a result, compared to what I expected).

I've reached the point where, if your email validation is that badly broken, I'm probably not going to trust you with anything more important than that. It's made for an excellent trust litmus test.

(And, I was wrong about Dice fixing it; I just switched back to using this address pattern, which they appeared to accept, but my daily email listed my email address as "userext@", not "user+ext@". They silently removed a character from my email address. Awesome.)
Looks good to avoid some spam with signing up to newsletters.
there's always ...@googlemail.com, if the + method fails.
I use a few of these all the time, but I wonder how long until services get smart and start ignoring the dots or removing anything after a + in all gmail addresses they get coming in.