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I am actually appalled and baffled at American Express not applying case sensitivity. Like, what the actual.

iamnotacrook 7y ago
I literally couldn't apply for an American Express card about 15 years ago because my (ISP) email address was too long. I wonder why they chose to restrict it rather than go with the standard email max length; they had to put effort in to pointlessly restrict new signups. Odd.
- myself248 7y ago
  Back in '99 or so, there was a company called Halibut Stuff selling T-shirts at Defcon (and presumably other events) that included a free email redirect service with purchase of a shirt. So I got a shirt that said "myself@iwenttodefcon7.andalligotwas.thislousyemailaddress.com" Not too much later, I ended up working in software validation, and I broke so many login forms with that perfectly-valid address, I lost count. Since then, Halibut Stuff dissolved and the forwarding service is long gone. If some HN reader wanted to set up a Mailinator-like service that generates absurd-yet-RFC-compliant email addresses for such testing, I think there might be a market.
  - boring_twenties 7y ago
    Like anyone would actually use such a testing service. Until a few years ago it was fairly commonplace for sites to reject my perfectly valid addresses just because they had more than one period (i.e., a subdomain) or in one case, ended in the .us TLD.
- OGWhales 7y ago
  Likely because of integration with legacy tech.
dhmiller 7y ago
I remember when their max password length was 8 characters. It blew my mind that a (effectively) bank had such terrible requirements. At least they fixed that
- bityard 7y ago
  The 8-character limit was probably because the web site was just a fancy front-end to some decades-old mainframe system. You'd be surprised the age of technology and software big banks rely on. They tend not to fuck with a working system, partly because their reputation and millions or billions of dollars are on the line, but also because no manager wants to be the reason for a critical outage.

I literally couldn't apply for an American Express card about 15 years ago because my (ISP) email address was too long. I wonder why they chose to restrict it rather than go with the standard email max length; they had to put effort in to pointlessly restrict new signups. Odd.

myself248 7y ago
Back in '99 or so, there was a company called Halibut Stuff selling T-shirts at Defcon (and presumably other events) that included a free email redirect service with purchase of a shirt. So I got a shirt that said "myself@iwenttodefcon7.andalligotwas.thislousyemailaddress.com" Not too much later, I ended up working in software validation, and I broke so many login forms with that perfectly-valid address, I lost count. Since then, Halibut Stuff dissolved and the forwarding service is long gone. If some HN reader wanted to set up a Mailinator-like service that generates absurd-yet-RFC-compliant email addresses for such testing, I think there might be a market.
- boring_twenties 7y ago
  Like anyone would actually use such a testing service. Until a few years ago it was fairly commonplace for sites to reject my perfectly valid addresses just because they had more than one period (i.e., a subdomain) or in one case, ended in the .us TLD.
OGWhales 7y ago
Likely because of integration with legacy tech.

dhmiller 7y ago

I remember when their max password length was 8 characters. It blew my mind that a (effectively) bank had such terrible requirements. At least they fixed that

bityard 7y ago
The 8-character limit was probably because the web site was just a fancy front-end to some decades-old mainframe system. You'd be surprised the age of technology and software big banks rely on. They tend not to fuck with a working system, partly because their reputation and millions or billions of dollars are on the line, but also because no manager wants to be the reason for a critical outage.