4 ms·

Not only do dots not matter, you can suffix "+<anything>" to your user name before the "@gmail.com" and it will still come to your email address. I actually lov

by sriku 6y ago

Not only do dots not matter, you can suffix "+<anything>" to your user name before the "@gmail.com" and it will still come to your email address. I actually love this "+" feature and use it a lot .. like send an email to "+bookmark@gmail.com" to bookmark a link, or register with "+nospam" and setup a filter for that address if anyone sends me email on that. This is supported by icloud and fastmail too.

sydd 6y ago
Also a good check if the site has some sloppy implementation. More than once have I seen that my "+" email was not accepted because of invalid characters. I take this as a sign to not trust the site's security too.
- ben0x539 6y ago
  If I were a site accepting email addresses, I could see rejecting "+" stuff because chances are it's people trying to pull something funny like registering multiple accounts when I only want one per email address. If I were less confrontational I might just silently strip the "+" part.
  - wlll 6y ago
    Sites that do any of that stuff are infuriating. Great if that's what you're going for.
    - ben0x539 6y ago
      My understanding is that it's okay to be infuriating if I have an analytics query or something claiming that it'll not affect 99ish % of users and also save customer support a bunch of work.
- bityard 6y ago
  This is not always accidental. Facebook, for example, does not allow a '+' in your email address and you cannot tell me that the engineers at Facebook don't know about the "+" in gmail addresses. The simplest explanation is that Facebook wants to make sure you are not signing up with an alias account. That is, they want your _real_ address, just like they insist on having your real name and other personal info.
rsync 6y ago
"This is supported by icloud and fastmail too." No, this is neither supported nor not supported by any email provider - it is part of the email specification. It works that way with all email systems, unless they are non-RFC compliant.
- drdaeman 6y ago
  This, to best of my awareness, is not correct. It is not a part of RFC5322, RFC2822 or RFC822 - nothing in those RFCs establish any particular semantics of local-part (the part before "@"), and in terms of syntax IIRC those RFCs only defines the escaping rules (backslashes, quotes, etc). RFC5233 mentions the established practice of using a separator character that splits local-part into "user" and "detail" pieces, but does not standardize any particular syntax for the separator (it cites "+" and "#" as possible examples). Moreover, this RFC is about Sieve language, and it is out of its scope to define such standard for email addresses. RFC3696 mentions "user+mailbox@example.com" but does not define any semantics, merely citing this as an example of a valid email address, then going to how it must be escaped in a mailto: URL. It is completely up to a particular provider to implement (or not) any subaddressing syntax and any logic related to it. No email specification I'm aware of makes this a requirement. (It's not like I've read every email RFC thoroughly, though, so I could be missing something.)
hinkley 6y ago
Lots of places don't like the + in their email address validation logic. The dots are probably more reliable, but are not as flexible. The best you could do is a secret code for yourself.

by sriku 6y ago

sydd 6y ago

Also a good check if the site has some sloppy implementation. More than once have I seen that my "+" email was not accepted because of invalid characters. I take this as a sign to not trust the site's security too.

ben0x539 6y ago
If I were a site accepting email addresses, I could see rejecting "+" stuff because chances are it's people trying to pull something funny like registering multiple accounts when I only want one per email address. If I were less confrontational I might just silently strip the "+" part.
- wlll 6y ago
  Sites that do any of that stuff are infuriating. Great if that's what you're going for.
  - ben0x539 6y ago
    My understanding is that it's okay to be infuriating if I have an analytics query or something claiming that it'll not affect 99ish % of users and also save customer support a bunch of work.
bityard 6y ago
This is not always accidental. Facebook, for example, does not allow a '+' in your email address and you cannot tell me that the engineers at Facebook don't know about the "+" in gmail addresses. The simplest explanation is that Facebook wants to make sure you are not signing up with an alias account. That is, they want your _real_ address, just like they insist on having your real name and other personal info.

rsync 6y ago

"This is supported by icloud and fastmail too." No, this is neither supported nor not supported by any email provider - it is part of the email specification. It works that way with all email systems, unless they are non-RFC compliant.

drdaeman 6y ago
This, to best of my awareness, is not correct. It is not a part of RFC5322, RFC2822 or RFC822 - nothing in those RFCs establish any particular semantics of local-part (the part before "@"), and in terms of syntax IIRC those RFCs only defines the escaping rules (backslashes, quotes, etc). RFC5233 mentions the established practice of using a separator character that splits local-part into "user" and "detail" pieces, but does not standardize any particular syntax for the separator (it cites "+" and "#" as possible examples). Moreover, this RFC is about Sieve language, and it is out of its scope to define such standard for email addresses. RFC3696 mentions "user+mailbox@example.com" but does not define any semantics, merely citing this as an example of a valid email address, then going to how it must be escaped in a mailto: URL. It is completely up to a particular provider to implement (or not) any subaddressing syntax and any logic related to it. No email specification I'm aware of makes this a requirement. (It's not like I've read every email RFC thoroughly, though, so I could be missing something.)

hinkley 6y ago

Lots of places don't like the + in their email address validation logic. The dots are probably more reliable, but are not as flexible. The best you could do is a secret code for yourself.