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I'm now in complete control of someone else’s commercial business hvac account because of precisely this problem. But that has absolutely nothing to do with th

I'm now in complete control of someone else’s commercial business hvac account because of precisely this problem. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the dots. Indeed, almost every comment about this has nothing to do with the dots, including the submission. Someone entered the wrong email address, and in the process got yours. It isn't like the dotted or undotted one is legitimately theirs -- it can't possibly be -- but that they forgot a middle initial or something of the sort. I've written about this before- https://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2016/04/08/email-addresses-need-a-checksum/ https://dennisforbes.ca/index.php/2016/04/08/email-addresses... -but the issue is with email itself, and the notion that once someone enters an email address it is authoritative. Like you I get a tonne of email for other people. I get travel tickets. I get room reward points. I get calendar events for car service in England. The dots aren't the reason.

hv42 9y ago
I strongly disagree with the author as well. Netflix is not doing its job. But the scam described by the author works because he victim already has an account registered with their Gmail address. The warning could be a good idea also I wish the email address of both the recipient and emitter were shown in a better in Gmail.
- shkkmo 9y ago
  The scam works because of Netflix's lax security practices around verifying emails. Given how easy it is to make a mistake filling in your email address, and email address should never be trusted until it is verified AND you should make clear during your sign-up process that the user should expect a verification email so they know something is wrong when they don't receive one.
- theclaw 9y ago
  But the author reset the scammer's password, denying them access to their fake account. The scam doesn't seem to work unless Netflix allows you to enter a new credit card number /without/ resetting the password of the scammer's account.
tempestn 9y ago
In the initial submission, without the dots issue though, the wrong address entered wouldn't be able to match an existing user.
- mulmen 9y ago
  That's why you send an email to whatever the user typed in with a link they have to click before they can complete the signup process. This is really, really basic stuff.
  - tempestn 9y ago
    Yes, I agree. My point was just that the dots did have an effect in the initial submission story.
jamesrcole 9y ago
I agree there's that fundamental problem with the way email gets handled. But at the same time I still wish Gmail would stop you from receiving emails on addresses other than the one you created yourself (ie by treating dots like any other character). It'd save me from getting several misdirected emails per day. It's true that all these misdirected emails come down to people misremembering their addresses, but I think you're overlooking an important class of such misremembering (which can be addressed on its own). I have a dot in my actual email address. There are several people who have a similar address who must be forgetting that their email address actually contains an additional initial or number. However some of these people do not have the dot in their actual email address. I.e my email address: this.that@gmail.com The other email addresses: thisnthat@gmail.com, thisthat7@gmail.com, etc ...where the other addresses get misremembered as: thisthat@gmail.com I get these peoples' emails, but that could be easily avoided if Gmail took note of the dots.
- joedj 9y ago
  I do this, using a Google Apps script to send any emails to unexpected addresses to Spam. Something like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24540743/how-to-spam-filter-gmail-messages-by-recipient-address https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24540743/how-to-spam-fil...
  - jamesrcole 9y ago
    I have a concern with that. Say I train the filter to treat emails from company X as spam, and then in the future I sign up with company X and their emails to me get treated as spam. I dont know for sure if that's how the filter would behave, though.

hv42 9y ago

I strongly disagree with the author as well. Netflix is not doing its job. But the scam described by the author works because he victim already has an account registered with their Gmail address. The warning could be a good idea also I wish the email address of both the recipient and emitter were shown in a better in Gmail.

shkkmo 9y ago
The scam works because of Netflix's lax security practices around verifying emails. Given how easy it is to make a mistake filling in your email address, and email address should never be trusted until it is verified AND you should make clear during your sign-up process that the user should expect a verification email so they know something is wrong when they don't receive one.
theclaw 9y ago
But the author reset the scammer's password, denying them access to their fake account. The scam doesn't seem to work unless Netflix allows you to enter a new credit card number /without/ resetting the password of the scammer's account.

tempestn 9y ago

In the initial submission, without the dots issue though, the wrong address entered wouldn't be able to match an existing user.

mulmen 9y ago
That's why you send an email to whatever the user typed in with a link they have to click before they can complete the signup process. This is really, really basic stuff.
- tempestn 9y ago
  Yes, I agree. My point was just that the dots did have an effect in the initial submission story.

jamesrcole 9y ago

I agree there's that fundamental problem with the way email gets handled. But at the same time I still wish Gmail would stop you from receiving emails on addresses other than the one you created yourself (ie by treating dots like any other character). It'd save me from getting several misdirected emails per day. It's true that all these misdirected emails come down to people misremembering their addresses, but I think you're overlooking an important class of such misremembering (which can be addressed on its own). I have a dot in my actual email address. There are several people who have a similar address who must be forgetting that their email address actually contains an additional initial or number. However some of these people do not have the dot in their actual email address. I.e my email address: this.that@gmail.com The other email addresses: thisnthat@gmail.com, thisthat7@gmail.com, etc ...where the other addresses get misremembered as: thisthat@gmail.com I get these peoples' emails, but that could be easily avoided if Gmail took note of the dots.

joedj 9y ago
I do this, using a Google Apps script to send any emails to unexpected addresses to Spam. Something like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24540743/how-to-spam-filter-gmail-messages-by-recipient-address https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24540743/how-to-spam-fil...
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  I have a concern with that. Say I train the filter to treat emails from company X as spam, and then in the future I sign up with company X and their emails to me get treated as spam. I dont know for sure if that's how the filter would behave, though.