6 ms·

So if my email is HeLLo@example.com because I want to be cute people will have to try 6 times before they finally get the right email address? Imagine telling t

So if my email is HeLLo@example.com because I want to be cute people will have to try 6 times before they finally get the right email address? Imagine telling that to someone in person. This kind "weird" casing isn't that rare and doesn't require cute usernames: "DonaldDuck@example.com", "FreeBSD@example.com", "DrMcCoy@example.com", etc. Languages that don't have case is not an issue; the situations where a lowercase <-> uppercase mapping is not simple are actually not that many. It's not trivial, but not all that complex either. The most annoying part is Turkish, Azeri, and Lithuanian where the rules differ a bit but the used language is often unknown. For the purpose of matching things ("is this email address known in our system?") it's actually not that hard, since you can just treat several characters as identical (displaying text correctly to users is harder, but that's not important here). I see this attitude in various situations, often under "falsehoods programmers believe" articles, which goes something like "it's hard in a few rare cases, therefore we should not do it at all for the >99% cases where it's simple and unproblematic".

jstanley 4y ago
> So if my email is HeLLo@example.com because I want to be cute people will have to try 6 times before they finally get the right email address? Imagine telling that to someone in person. Yeah. That's fine. If my email is LLLLLLLLLLLL@example.com because I want to be cute I have to tell people to type exactly the right number of L's. Do you think they should just be able to type a lot of L's and as long as it's somewhere near it counts as the same email address? In a world where email addresses are always case sensitive, everyone will use lowercase (like they pretty much always already do anyway), and it'll be fine.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  "LLL@" doesn't map to "LLLLLLLL@" in any logical way. "lll@" does; that's just a silly argument.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    It also maps to 111@ and III@, depending in font
    - Aethylia 4y ago
      By maps to, they mean it counts as the same email address. 111@ and lll@ do not do that. The font has no impact on the email spec. However it can add extra confusion.
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        I doubt anyone is crazy enough to implement the email spec for comparing emails, to be fair. I would honestly be surprised if any publicly available mail agent or server supports that craziness.
  - jstanley 4y ago
    The only reason "LLL" and "lll" mean the same thing are because currently email addresses are (sometimes) case insensitive. In a world where email addresses were "obviously" case sensitive, "LLL" mapping to "lll" would be just as crazy as "LLLLLLLLLL" mapping to "LLLLLLLLLLL". They just seem similar, to humans. But they're different strings.
- ctxc 4y ago
  "everyone will use lowercase (like they pretty much always already do anyway)" This in itself sounds is a falsehood!
leni536 4y ago
It is fine to have multiple email addresses connected to a single inbox. Email providers already do normalization like this that is not baked into the spec. Gmail for example treats johndoe@gmail.com and john.doe@gmail.com the same.
- znpy 4y ago
  And that’s why I regularly receive other people’s mail in my gmail inbox, and why i have stopped using gmail for anything important (it’s right to assume that gmail is also sending my emails to other people). Google’s gmail people aren’t really as smart as they think they are.
  - scambier 4y ago
    That's something I don't understand. I've always given my email as john.doe@gmail.com, and I sometimes receive emails - addressed to Another John Doe - sent to johndoe@gmail.com. That Another John Doe never, ever had access to johndoe@gmail.com, they just gave a wrong address. That's not gmail's fault.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Or someone assumed (or just tried) that other email address. I signed up for my university's email forwarding for alumni early on and got my first name as my email. For quite a while, I would get emails, including fairly sensitive ones, sent to me by not yet very email savvy people just assuming you could send an email to someone's first name and it would get to them.
      - derefr 4y ago
        Nah, it happens with mangled names that no bot would ever try to stuff, too. E.g. I own derefr@gmail; but I sometimes receive email from people trying to reach a man named "Derek" — who almost certainly owns the address derek.fr@gmail, but probably typoed it once as dere.fr@, and now his browser autocompletes that into registration forms for him.
      - 4y ago

jstanley 4y ago

> So if my email is HeLLo@example.com because I want to be cute people will have to try 6 times before they finally get the right email address? Imagine telling that to someone in person. Yeah. That's fine. If my email is LLLLLLLLLLLL@example.com because I want to be cute I have to tell people to type exactly the right number of L's. Do you think they should just be able to type a lot of L's and as long as it's somewhere near it counts as the same email address? In a world where email addresses are always case sensitive, everyone will use lowercase (like they pretty much always already do anyway), and it'll be fine.

Beltalowda 4y ago
"LLL@" doesn't map to "LLLLLLLL@" in any logical way. "lll@" does; that's just a silly argument.
- TylerE 4y ago
  It also maps to 111@ and III@, depending in font
  - Aethylia 4y ago
    By maps to, they mean it counts as the same email address. 111@ and lll@ do not do that. The font has no impact on the email spec. However it can add extra confusion.
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      I doubt anyone is crazy enough to implement the email spec for comparing emails, to be fair. I would honestly be surprised if any publicly available mail agent or server supports that craziness.
- jstanley 4y ago
  The only reason "LLL" and "lll" mean the same thing are because currently email addresses are (sometimes) case insensitive. In a world where email addresses were "obviously" case sensitive, "LLL" mapping to "lll" would be just as crazy as "LLLLLLLLLL" mapping to "LLLLLLLLLLL". They just seem similar, to humans. But they're different strings.
ctxc 4y ago
"everyone will use lowercase (like they pretty much always already do anyway)" This in itself sounds is a falsehood!

leni536 4y ago

It is fine to have multiple email addresses connected to a single inbox. Email providers already do normalization like this that is not baked into the spec. Gmail for example treats johndoe@gmail.com and john.doe@gmail.com the same.

znpy 4y ago
And that’s why I regularly receive other people’s mail in my gmail inbox, and why i have stopped using gmail for anything important (it’s right to assume that gmail is also sending my emails to other people). Google’s gmail people aren’t really as smart as they think they are.
- scambier 4y ago
  That's something I don't understand. I've always given my email as john.doe@gmail.com, and I sometimes receive emails - addressed to Another John Doe - sent to johndoe@gmail.com. That Another John Doe never, ever had access to johndoe@gmail.com, they just gave a wrong address. That's not gmail's fault.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Or someone assumed (or just tried) that other email address. I signed up for my university's email forwarding for alumni early on and got my first name as my email. For quite a while, I would get emails, including fairly sensitive ones, sent to me by not yet very email savvy people just assuming you could send an email to someone's first name and it would get to them.
    - derefr 4y ago
      Nah, it happens with mangled names that no bot would ever try to stuff, too. E.g. I own derefr@gmail; but I sometimes receive email from people trying to reach a man named "Derek" — who almost certainly owns the address derek.fr@gmail, but probably typoed it once as dere.fr@, and now his browser autocompletes that into registration forms for him.
    - 4y ago