Perhaps adding dots then? They shouldn't normally be stripped, but are also ignored by gmail. john.smith would obviously still get a ton of spam, but somethin

Perhaps adding dots then? They shouldn't normally be stripped, but are also ignored by gmail. john.smith would obviously still get a ton of spam, but something like j.ohn.smith might not. (If we were literally talking about the name John Smith I expect it still would, but for other names that should work...)