4 ms·

This doesn't really make any sense. It's not just gmail that does this, dots are almost always ignored before the @. Nobody else can register an email that is

This doesn't really make any sense. It's not just gmail that does this, dots are almost always ignored before the @. Nobody else can register an email that is the same as yours but without a dot. So the only way you receive someone else's email is if they give the wrong address.

denton-scratch 4y ago
> It's not just gmail that does this, dots are almost always ignored before the @. That's not my experience. Which non-gmail email software ignores dots before the @? Thinking about this, I guess the sending MTA doesn't care about dots; it goes RCPT TO: <address.with.dots@example.com>. The receiving MTA then has to validate that address; it does that using some account database that isn't typically part of the MTA - it could be a unix account (no dots!), a database table, or an LDAP user. Finally it passes the mail off to a delivery agent, which hopefully relies on the same account database. So the elision of dots appears to be a feature of certain account databases. So which account databases elide dots?
- account42 4y ago
  MTAs can be configured to additional transforms before looking up the account. For example, postfix's virtual table [0] can be used for this and on my server it does elide dots in the local part (along with everything else). [0] https://www.postfix.org/ADDRESS_REWRITING_README.html#virtual https://www.postfix.org/ADDRESS_REWRITING_README.html#virtua...
znpy 4y ago
Dots are never ignored before the @, and also aren’t ignored after it, for that matter. I guess this is another falsehood people believe about emails. > Nobody else can register an email that is the same as yours but without a dot. It used to be possible, then google decided to stop allowing that (guess why?) And by the way, that’s an arbitrary decision. I have run mail servers and it’s just and cam tell you… it’s an arbitrary decision.

denton-scratch 4y ago

> It's not just gmail that does this, dots are almost always ignored before the @. That's not my experience. Which non-gmail email software ignores dots before the @? Thinking about this, I guess the sending MTA doesn't care about dots; it goes RCPT TO: <address.with.dots@example.com>. The receiving MTA then has to validate that address; it does that using some account database that isn't typically part of the MTA - it could be a unix account (no dots!), a database table, or an LDAP user. Finally it passes the mail off to a delivery agent, which hopefully relies on the same account database. So the elision of dots appears to be a feature of certain account databases. So which account databases elide dots?

account42 4y ago
MTAs can be configured to additional transforms before looking up the account. For example, postfix's virtual table [0] can be used for this and on my server it does elide dots in the local part (along with everything else). [0] https://www.postfix.org/ADDRESS_REWRITING_README.html#virtual https://www.postfix.org/ADDRESS_REWRITING_README.html#virtua...

znpy 4y ago

Dots are never ignored before the @, and also aren’t ignored after it, for that matter. I guess this is another falsehood people believe about emails. > Nobody else can register an email that is the same as yours but without a dot. It used to be possible, then google decided to stop allowing that (guess why?) And by the way, that’s an arbitrary decision. I have run mail servers and it’s just and cam tell you… it’s an arbitrary decision.