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The World's Longest Alphabetical Email Address (2004)
- madaxe_again 6y agoCongratulations on breaking the HN mobile layout!
- graphpapa 6y agoAhhhh so that’s what happened!
- surround 6y agoI probably refreshed the page a dozen times
- mattigames 6y agoOne must never forget to use the CSS rule `word-break: break-word;` on user generated content.
- mdszy 6y agoWell, you can't because signups aren't available right now.
- turnipla 6y agoI love that it stores 6000 mails in 6.0 Megabytes.
- notthemessiah 6y agoI get annoyed when forms can't process a '+' in my address.
- NullPrefix 6y agoNot processing '+' is a way for spammers to self identify.
- tsbinz 6y agoIf it was about being able to spam, they'd just silently strip the + part. I think it's just ignorance ... in my own mailserver I have a custom separator that usually doesn't trip validation functions.
- billme 6y agoThis assumes the “+” is not a trick to see if they are stripping the “+” from the username of the email address; which then is automatically flagged as SPAM. Of course this assumes you’re creating a new email per contact, not just using a feature that was never intended as a anti-spam tool.
- jrockway 6y agoI used - in the qmail days and never had any problems. The + causes enough problems that I've basically stopped using it. People seem to spam me, but gmail is pretty good at filtering all that stuff into the "Promotions" folder, which is nice.
- EarthIsHome 6y agoCan you go into a little more detail or provide a pseudo example? I'm confused at how this allows spammers to self-identity.
- joncrane 6y agoThis is intentional. It's because the people who own the site know the gmail <realemail>+thisisspam@gmail.com trick and they prevent people using that trick.
- yeezyseezy 6y agoI've fixed this issue at a large company, and it was not intentional, but poorly written regex
- RL_Quine 6y agoYou can deal with this by using subdomain tags on some providers. user@tag.domain.com rather than user+tag@domain.com.
- gumby 6y agoI have only a handful of addresses on my machine so implemented the letter ‘f’ as the selector (none of the usernames nor various full name aliases have that letter in them). I really doubt any spammer could screen that out :-)
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoApparently, this was previously posted here in 2013. Nobody commented on it or upvoted it.
- oefrha 6y agoThis domain makes me wonder if there’s a domain length limit on HN. Edit: RFC 1035 section 2.3.4 says 255 octets. Could be shorter here, though. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1035 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1035
- wereHamster 6y agoDNS label name limit is 63 characters, and total length limit 255 (or thereabouts). Maybe newer implementations allow longer names, you'd have to test though. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32290167/what-is-the-maximum-length-of-a-dns-name https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32290167/what-is-the-max...
- mytailorisrich 6y ago> and total length limit 255 (or thereabouts) The continuous discussion about "thereabouts" is because the 255 bytes limit applies to encoded name fields (in DNS messages), not domain names as we usually write them in dotted format. Since the encoded format is that each label is preceded by its length and the whole domain ends by 'root' (i.e. 0x00) this means that domains names as we usually write them are limited to 253 bytes, including the dots (we don't write the 'root' label and label lengths are replaced by dots except the first one, that's 2 bytes to subtract from 255).
- 123048713 6y agoYou can have a lot more fun than that if you want to break things. An IP address has lots of valid formats nobody uses. ;; ANSWER SECTION: wikipedia.org. 599 IN A 208.80.154.224 Lets try this in decimal: http://3494943456/ http://3494943456/ Sort of cool, but what happens if we overflow it by adding 232? >>> 3494943456 + 2**32 http://7789910752/ http://7789910752/ I mean that's cool, but how far can we go? >>> 3494943456 + (2**32) ** 2 http://18446744077204495072/ http://18446744077204495072/ So that still works, what about going further? >>> 3494943456 + (2**32) ** 100 http://1976906478982563993654226439837963340315390682625773828918265710158340601093951126756295848974613063099294244703164628428967968057547050608904859234600159014229329102195101574081057061661948106884800321129818693914608845281661462333814326544389741164009367602548103882724187831587394954463183137735657307019637359169290834318700453890617892714561362370427388384101316010134426924662084888461376218489653794242999053891151382465888482003300085676110173467997003494159830094271947506024974271953414706038068210170338961663202839203641120865263292248718692924915189291455200665479606951612257868495299167071771306894428954788679149900427954823300393640007649397742106635573828425752730305375232721339803871889299281134208211131341001135605446809477409979279627213188610112867929569789492640465736633925065052540962862027736312499143902692033755536952046162410311395501619568814547777271031259247973250866583116853615908352881305587297178183145388745781297005733124832/ http://19769064789825639936542264398379633403153906826257738... Going further actually breaks some browsers (Firefox can handle longer than Internet Explorer for example), breaks web servers because they log the full version before it is transformed, and even acts as a fingerprinting vector. The limit is usually in the several hundred kilobyte range, and depending on the way that the underlying operating system handles it, things get seriously broken very quickly.
- newscracker 6y agoOn the signup page: > Each FREE mailbox account comes with 25MB of storage capacity, which is a lot more than what is offered by most free email providers. This can allow you to store over 250,000 email messages. This has not aged well since 2003. The amount of bloat in emails now is quite high since everybody who sends emails wants to use HTML with embeds while also inserting tracking pixels, images, links, etc.
- auxym 6y agoThe page also advertises flash games. Old school.
- dathinab 6y agoFun fact there are 3(+?) ways to embed images: 1. Using a link like in a normal website => might not load. 2. Using a data uri => increases mail size, there is no rfc as far as I know which states that this even had to be supported. 3. Using a cid , link as specified by the mail rfc => increased size and more complex (you basically put a link in the http body which refers to another body in the multiparty/mixed body it's in by the unique cid. Which is supposed to be works unique but quite to often is not.
- tylerrobinson 6y agoGmail blew our collective minds when they started with, what, 1 GB free? And the gimmicky counter on the login page showing increasing storage free forever at some rate of a few more kilobytes per second. As I recall, it was common to have 10 MB inbox storage for free email accounts around that time.
- hlandau 6y agoThe local part of an email address can also contain spaces if in quotes: "John Smith"@example.com In fact, the local part is a set of elements separated by dots, each of which can be quoted. The following is valid: "John Smith@example.com".foo."John Smith".!$%^&*/@example.com Of course, barely anything supports this.
- the_jeremy 6y agoWith SMTPUTF8, you can do pretty much anything, including emoji in email addresses. Not much supports this, either.
- hundchenkatze 6y agoHandling comments in emails is fun too! Pete(A nice \) chap) <pete(his account)@silly.test(his host)> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#appendix-A.5 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#appendix-A.5
- dathinab 6y agoNote that comments are only valid in mail headers, but not smtp. Generally even besides CFWS related differences there are some differences in between which email addresses SMTP allows and which are allowed in mail headers.... Lastly given that quoting in the local part as well as some special forms of the domain part are not supported by most programs it's often sensible to reject them, i.e. treat them as invalid even through technically they are not. (But you really should support internationalized mails!)
- ChrisSD 6y agoThe format of an email address is: [whatever the server accepts]@[valid domain name] No more, no less. Although "server" here also includes anything in-between that may barf on a local part or (sometimes) even a domain name it doesn't like. For example, some forms don't like emails to top level domains.
- mercurywells 6y ago
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoI think the links at the bottom are more interesting than the site
- mikl 6y agoI have my own e-mail addresses at rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbierbar.com that I use for fun and testing form validation. It is surprisingly rare that I find sites that break over it.
- tzs 6y agoI've seriously considered getting some long and meaningless domain (although not that long) for some serious use. I'd probably go with something like a prefix of 'm' (for "mail") followed by 64 random bits in hex, so something like m95aaa5aea09bdc67.com. Addresses there would only be used as the recovery addresses for vital services such as bank and brokerage accounts, domain registrar accounts, telephone company accounts, and mail hosting accounts, and that's probably all. By "recovery address" I mean the address that the service provider will use if someone initiates an "I forgot my password and lost my 2FA device!" password reset. It's any address that if someone takes control of they can take over your account at that service starting from at most your user name on that service. Why a meaningless name like m95aaa5aea09bdc67.com? To minimize the risk of someone coming in and trying to take it over via a trademark dispute. For this I want domain name that I can be very sure I can keep as long as the current domain system is still in place.
- myself248 6y agoHah! I was just showing that video to a friend last night. I used to have myself@iwenttodefcon7.andalligotwas.thislousyemailaddress.com and I used it for quite a bit of testing too. Broke all sorts of things, either because of length or multiple levels of subdomain or who knows what. I'd love a service that gives you all sorts of peculiar-but-valid addresses for testing... hmm. Is there a market here?
- daveslash 6y agoI don't speak German, but I used Youtube's auto-translate captions to get the gist of what I was seeing.... that is amazing.
- dathinab 6y agoOh I just realized that the name was that Bart barbier thing ;). I first thought it's random letters.
- NikolaNovak 6y agoFrustratingly, in the opposite realm, I setup a really short address on my domain I wanted to use for business correspondence (b@mydomain.com), and it's astonishing how many websites/forms reject it due to being "invalid" :<
- deepspace 6y agoSome years ago I realized that the last two letters of my first name is the same as a country TLD. So I registered the domain [letters 2 to (n-2)].[TLD], giving me an email address of [first letter]@letters 2 to (n-2)].[TLD] - i.e. something in the vein of r@ebec.ca. I thought that would be a great time saver, but to my chagrin it turns out that both computers and humans tend to have difficulty understanding such an unusual scheme.
- c22 6y agoI tried to use the @ as an A in an email address once and found it nearly impossible to relay to other humans.
- airstrike 6y agoI usually try a@b.com for forms I don't care about, but often have to resort to the more verbose nobody@nowhere.com when the validator complains about the former being too short...
- aog 6y agoWhile this seems excessive this would actually be easier to use- amazonsupport@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com
- legitster 6y agoI mean, there are easier and more universal ways to break signup forms without needing a service. If that is what you are into.
- par 6y agoNo longer accepting new signups, which is disappointing :(
- MaximumMadness 6y agoThis must have been a QA nightmare when it originally launched
- dreamcompiler 6y agoI solve the spam problem by having my own domain with an infinite number of email addresses. Whenever I sign up for something I use $PERMUTE@mydomain.com, where PERMUTE is some easily-reversible permutation of the vendor's own name. This has two benefits: I can easily route/filter incoming email from that vendor, and if I ever receive spam at that address I know which vendor sold my info.
- todd3834 6y agoI do this as well using a not so well know trick that exists on most major email providers including gmail and iCloud: myemail+permute@icloud.com. Those emails will arrive at myemail@icloud.com
- layoutIfNeeded 6y agoThis won't help you tracking down which service leaked your e-mail address, because the first thing spammers do is trimming the +suffix.
- therein 6y agoThat is unless the spammer was clever to do the following: providersWithSuffixSupport = ["icloud.com", "gmail.com", "googlemail.com", ...]; if email.endsWithAnyOf(providersWithSuffixSupport) { email = email.trimBetweenFirstOccurrence("+", "@"); }
- ryantgtg 6y agoI have a site with users, and while we have no interest in selling their addresses, it still strikes me as futile when people add "+mysite" to their address. It would take me 2 seconds in excel to zap all those appendages.
- tastroder 6y agoNot everybody uses the scheme for some futile security purpose, some sites are just a bit annoying with their outgoing addresses with their non-nefarious communication and the + scheme can be a nice way for rules.
- surround 6y agoJust like your mom. https://your.mom/ https://your.mom/
- paultopia 6y agoOh joy, OP's username trashed mobile safari's rendering of HN
- prostanac 6y agoit's the linked domain name, OP's username is "ahoy"
- throw03172019 6y agoCan HackerNews limit username lengths? This post causes horizontal overflow in the list and detail view. Safari - iOS
- viklove 6y agoWhy does this read like a JIRA comment left by a PM
- battery_cowboy 6y agoI was wondering why my Android Firefox was zoomed in a bit on the front page, this is the second time this week I've seen it, now I know!
- ScottWRobinson 6y agoAll of my web apps limit email addresses to 128 characters. This domain alone is 67. If you exceed the 128 character limit then I'm not sure I want you to sign up anyway...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- edm0nd 6y agoI guess I can plug my max char .com domain too here. No email tho. http://bigtittyjapanesewomenthatlooklikecutecatsandipromisenoweirdporn.com/ http://bigtittyjapanesewomenthatlooklikecutecatsandipromisen...
- gnicholas 6y agoFun fact: having this article on the front page made my iphone render all the front page text smaller so it could fit the full URL. When I hid the listing, text sizing went back to normal. Yet another side-effect of a super long domain name!
- city41 6y agoWeird, it just causes horizontal scrolling for me on mobile safari.
- wayneftw 6y agoThe URL of this story will now screw up the hckrnews.com UI for about a week.