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> An email address like ^_^@example.com or +&#@example.com is invalid My current employer autogenerated a company email address for me including the apostrophe

> An email address like ^_^@example.com or +&#@example.com is invalid My current employer autogenerated a company email address for me including the apostrophe in my last name. I couldn't believe that was a legal character, but I looked it up, and sure enough it is. Of course, plenty of other internal systems reacted the same way I did, and I frequently generate errors whenever I try to register myself with random services :p

technion 4y ago
I wrote our onboarding system and had it strip apostrophes from names. Some people object, but they object more when random websites refuse to let them sign up.
wtmt 4y ago
I’ve seen a lot of systems, including corporate systems for internal use, reject apostrophes in email addresses (and sometimes even in other fields). Apparently the developers are too lazy to deal with strings properly and fear SQL injection attacks, and perhaps they don’t trust all the other systems they may interface with. So their escape hatch is to prevent these from being allowed. (“Little Bobby Tables” from xkcd comes to my mind whenever I see these restrictions)
- seanw444 4y ago
  I wonder if this is a good indicator of a bad product/company to be a user of. If they're so uncertain about their tech stack that they have to prevent certain characters from being used in passwords/emails/etc, maybe it's not something you should trust?
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    It is a very good indicator that it's a large company with centralized IT, where ops personal works in a different department from devs. If you are buying software from them, it's probably bad. But I don't think it's a reliable indicator for companies in general.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Honestly, I would actually consider this best practice. There is absolutely no reason to go the trouble of allowing special characters in emails and fight every system you encounter. Note that allowing Unicode Letter characters is a whole different topic, and in fact much less risky than allowing random punctuation. At least for the vast majority of people, this is much more important to personal identity than having your name spelled without a quote mark that will anyway confuse numerous systems where you may want access.

technion 4y ago

I wrote our onboarding system and had it strip apostrophes from names. Some people object, but they object more when random websites refuse to let them sign up.

wtmt 4y ago

I’ve seen a lot of systems, including corporate systems for internal use, reject apostrophes in email addresses (and sometimes even in other fields). Apparently the developers are too lazy to deal with strings properly and fear SQL injection attacks, and perhaps they don’t trust all the other systems they may interface with. So their escape hatch is to prevent these from being allowed. (“Little Bobby Tables” from xkcd comes to my mind whenever I see these restrictions)

seanw444 4y ago
I wonder if this is a good indicator of a bad product/company to be a user of. If they're so uncertain about their tech stack that they have to prevent certain characters from being used in passwords/emails/etc, maybe it's not something you should trust?
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  It is a very good indicator that it's a large company with centralized IT, where ops personal works in a different department from devs. If you are buying software from them, it's probably bad. But I don't think it's a reliable indicator for companies in general.
tsimionescu 4y ago
Honestly, I would actually consider this best practice. There is absolutely no reason to go the trouble of allowing special characters in emails and fight every system you encounter. Note that allowing Unicode Letter characters is a whole different topic, and in fact much less risky than allowing random punctuation. At least for the vast majority of people, this is much more important to personal identity than having your name spelled without a quote mark that will anyway confuse numerous systems where you may want access.