7 ms·

This is a great reminder that Gmail ignores dots on the left side of the @ symbol, which means I am constantly getting e-mail for other people. The “+” tagging

• jnrk 3y ago
  > but moved everything of consequence to better providers. What other providers do you recommend?
• laurentlb 3y ago
  Can you clarify how ignoring the dots is a problem?
  • rcarmo 3y ago
    I get literally hundreds of unsolicited emails a week.
  • adrianmsmith 3y ago
    One problem I've encountered is that usually sites won't allow you to register an account if the email address is already registered at that site. So if I register foo@gmail.com then someone else can't accidentally register foo@gmail.com. But they can register f.o.o@gmail.com just fine. So I mean at my Gmail I have all manner of different Facebook accounts with various misspelling of my email address notifying me of stuff, none of them are mine. I'm sure they entered my email address (with dots) by accident, not on purpose. I appreciate that sites not allowing you to register the same email address twice hardly solves everything, as I absolutely get email to my actual correct Gmail address from random sites I've never signed up for. But at least it would help in certain cases like Facebook where I do have an account.
    • venusenvy47 3y ago
      I don't understand how someone could sign up for a site with f.o.o@gmail.com in this example. That person would never receive email from the site (like a confirmation), because the foo@gmail.com owner would receive the confirmation. Doesn't Facebook require confirmation before the account is created?
    • londons_explore 3y ago
      I think you just chose an insufficiently unique email address. I never get any of these problems.
      • beardyw 3y ago
        Mr Foo and I thought having an email address for our name was a great idea, but it does tend to attract mistaken addresses.
    • juergbi 3y ago
      Doesn't Facebook require users to verify the email address with a confirmation email? If so, the only Facebook spam you should be able to get would be such confirmation emails. Or what am I missing?
      • Taniwha 3y ago
        Oh I wish that were true, I've been receiving email for years for someone who signed up to facebook with my email address. It's a horrible pain, you can't contact facebook without a facebook account, and I can't create one because someone already has one with my email address.
        • InsomniacL 3y ago
          Recover the account if you own the email address?
          • Taniwha 3y ago
  • dredmorbius 3y ago
    To borrow an example from Internet domain names, consider: experts.exchang@gmail.com expert.sexchange@gmail.com Those addresses would be identical by Gmail's parsing conventions.
    • xigoi 3y ago
      And how is that a problem?
      • dredmorbius 3y ago
        The presumption would be that these are two different entities.
        • InsomniacL 3y ago
          Yes, but how can that ever cause a problem to the end user?
        • xigoi 3y ago
          They can't be, because Gmail obviously won't let you register an address that's already registered.
          • dredmorbius 3y ago
            Will Gmail prevent you from entering such an address elsewhere, thinking either that it is yours, or that it is the email of some intended recipient other than the actual Gmail accountholder? Alternatively: will third-party systems consolidate such addresses under a single account, or treat them as different?
            • xigoi 3y ago
              Will any e-mail service prevent you from entering an address that's not yours to another site?
      • Fnoord 3y ago
  • renatovico 3y ago
    I have a big problem because this, my account is créate in closed beta period, in this stage this feature does exist. My email: name.alias@gmail, because already exists namealias@gmail. Ok the email Work fine for 4y before this feature exists, after if email send exacly works but the problem i am started reciving email for the other user and this is e-mail is not cool. After 10y i give up of gmail and moved to my domain
  • Xelbair 3y ago
    imagine that you have an address name.surname@gmail.com imagine that someone else has an address namesurname@gmail.com this is very similar case to my mom's one. she constantly gets emails meant for someone else - including PII - because she has no dot in email, but the other party has a dot. I know for sure that her's account is quite old one.
    • sampo 3y ago
      > imagine that you have an address name.surname@gmail.com > imagine that someone else has an address namesurname@gmail.com If gmail ignores dots, it shouldn't be possible to have name.surname and namesurname as two separate gmail accounts.
    • sethammons 3y ago
      Not for gmail though; gmail ignores those dots. But some.email@notgmail.com is normally a different inbox if the local part drops the dot.
      • fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
        > Not for gmail though; gmail ignores those dots. But some.email@notgmail.com is normally a different inbox if the local part drops the dot. My own mail server is configured to use a different character besides the `+` for tags and its notion of "same account" is defined by a mysql query. There's no way to know the interpretation of the local part in advance: you can apply various heuristics if you don't mind annoying people; or you can accept the email and verify it by sending an email.
        • chipsa 3y ago
          Similarly, I configured my mail server to use the system "tag.user@domain". So you can't use the same heuristic as gmail, because if you try to do an untagged email, you likely just give the tag, which doesn't correspond to a user.
    • InsomniacL 3y ago
      that makes no sense, Gmail ignores the dot so both those email addresses are the same and can only belong to one person. if you register namesurname@gmail.com, then you also every combination of it with a dot. n.amesurname@gmail.com na.mesurname@gmail.com nam.esurname@gmail.com etc..
• beardyw 3y ago
  > This is a great reminder that Gmail ignores dots on the left side of the @ symbol But sometimes handy to fool sign ups and use it twice (or more depending on length). I wonder if you can use multiple dots?
  • adrianmsmith 3y ago
    I'm not sure if you can use f..oo@gmail.com but if your email address is longer than a few characters then there are definitely a large number of combinations you can use if you want to register multiple accounts at one service, foo@, f.oo@, fo.o@, f.o.o@ etc. You can also use foo+extra@gmail.com and the +extra will be ignored, so you can give each service a separate email address like foo+hn@gmail.com. Beware, as I found out the hard way, this makes account recovery more difficult. To reset your password you need to enter your email address usually. But if you used +foo stuff then you might not be able to remember what email address you used.
    • paulgb 3y ago
      > But if you used +foo stuff then you might not be able to remember what email address you used. I’ve sometimes resorted to finding a piece of email from them and looking at the “To” header.
    • NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
      > But if you used +foo stuff then you might not be able to remember what email address you used. That's exactly what password managers are for.
    • wongarsu 3y ago
      > I'm not sure if you can use f..oo@gmail.com That wouldn't be a valid email address. (unless it's quoted. "f..oo"@gmail.com is valid, but so obscure nobody will accept it).
• yreg 3y ago
  What do you mean 'not fixed'? "Fixing" that would break a documented feature millions of people depend on.
• TonyTrapp 3y ago
  Just one anecdata, but in my case, all of the unwanted signups I get on my gmail address are not due to dots - they are flat out because people input my email address exactly the same way as I would - without dots. I think it's more a side-effect of gmail being "the" global email namespace for millions of people, not because of anything their service itself is doing.
  • falcor84 3y ago
    Sorry to nitpick, but I believe that "anecdata" is strictly plural and as such "one anecdata" is grammatically incorrect. It should probably be just "one anecdote", but if you want to emphasize the "data" aspect, I'd go with "one point of anecdata" or more concisely - "one anecdatum". Somewhat surprisingly to me, "anecdatum" has apparently never yet appeared in print [0], and I'm happy for the two of us to share credit in coining it. [0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=anecdatum https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=anecdatum
    • TonyTrapp 3y ago
      Anecdata is a humorous term for "anecdotal evidence", i.e. it is not real "data". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anecdata#Noun https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anecdata#Noun
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • numpad0 3y ago
        I think the problem he has with the word is data is the plural(!) for singular datum. So one data is datum, two cactuses are cacti, and two datas is data. Maybe not always colloquially but technically. Hence anecdatum and anecdata.
        • seatsniffer 3y ago
          It depends on where you are. In the US it's like you say. But in the UK for example they will often use data as singular.
• richardw 3y ago
  Drives me insane. And so many people and systems auto adjust addresses, produce almost mine, and then gmail delivers the random output. I once set up a google group to forward mail to. I’d pay to block the “full stop ignore” feature.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • InsomniacL 3y ago
    Can you give an example please? How dose ignoring dots cause you to receive other peoples mail?
    • richardw 3y ago
      Thanks for checking. One person is x.yz@gmail. Tens of times I’ve had people or systems strip the x, I am y.z and get their mail. Invites to funerals. Business mail. Admittedly reduced lately, he probably uses it less. One professor has a “t” in his name, so “ytz”. People miss the t and send to yz. Dot gets ignored so I get those. I get assignments, or people pleading for extensions. That’s stopped over time. The stuff is important so I tried hard to get it to the right person. But a bounce to the sender would have been better. It’s a bit wearying to be a post forwarder. Most of the spam I get is to yz. Some makes it through. I’ve never used that version, ever. I just checked spam now. First 4 messages were to “yz”. So many mistakes get sent to that version. After many years I tried setting a rule to block that version because it’s definitely not for me, but no go (although maybe that’s why I get less now of the above two examples. I’ll check my rules in the morning). I’ve had the address since the earliest intro-only days so it’s had time to add crud.
    • martin_a 3y ago
      johndoe@gmail.com and john.doe@gmail.com are obviously two different addresses. At least for me. I don't see why the first one should receive mails from the second one.
      • manojlds 3y ago
• InsomniacL 3y ago
  > This is a great reminder that Gmail ignores dots on the left side of the @ symbol, which means I am constantly getting e-mail for other people. That is not how it works, you own every combination of your email address with dots left of @ automatically. if you own foo@gmail.com, then nobody else can own f.oo@gmail.com because you own it, it's an alias of your email address esentially.
  • daigoba66 3y ago
    Isn’t that functionally the same as “ignore dots”? Meaning they can just strip out the dots when matching email addresses: either on login/signup or mail routing.
    • nmeofthestate 3y ago
      It is, but the key point is that this doesn't lead to people sending mail to the wrong address since nobody can sign up to "the wrong address" in the first place. There's one address allowed, aliased to all permutations.
      • ethbr1 3y ago
        It does lead to people sending mail to the wrong address, from personal experience since Gmail was in beta. I've gotten sensitive emails and account signups with different dots for years. But the cause of that appears to be user error -- people thinking they own email addresses that are not actually theirs.
        • InsomniacL 3y ago
          > I've gotten sensitive emails and account signups with different dots for years. Please, please give an example.. Also, read this.. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en#zippy=%2Cno-one-can-take-your-username%2Cno-one-sees-your-mail https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en#zippy=%... > if your email is johnsmith@gmail.com, you own all dotted versions of your address > If anyone tries to create a Gmail account with a dotted version of your username, they'll get an error saying the username is already taken. > Your account is still private and secure. Emails sent to any dotted version of your address will only go to you.
• nmeofthestate 3y ago
  > This is a great reminder that Gmail ignores dots on the left side of the @ symbol, which means I am constantly getting e-mail for other people. Genuinely confused - which other people? There are no other people with your Gmail address but added/removed '.' characters. What you're seeing is people sending emails to the wrong email address - nothing to do with presence or absence of '.' characters. Allowing addresses to subtly differ based on '.' presence/absence would result in more wrongly addressed emails, hence the aliasing. I've been getting wrong Gmail emails all the time for years because a woman in Saskatchewan keeps getting her email wrong when signing up to stuff online. Quite funny really but nothing to do with .'s
  • donalhunt 3y ago
    Same. The most humerus conversation I got added to involved a local residential community dispute where everyone assumed my insistence of being removed from the thread was actually my namesake trying to avoid the conversation. His wife finally stepped in to resolve the situation.
  • Bluecobra 3y ago
    > I've been getting wrong Gmail emails all the time for years because a woman in Saskatchewan keeps getting her email wrong when signing up to stuff online. I have the same problem but multiplied by 25x due to having a <first initial><last name> gmail address from 2004 when it was still invite only. It’s really annoying that there’s so many services that don’t verify email addresses…
    • bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
      How would they verify without not emailing you?
  • LastTrain 3y ago
    Because third party sites treat them as different - so everyone that signs up for Hulu with some combination of my email address but with dots, the confirmation goes to me. I have an early, small gmail name and am inundated with these kinds of emails and it is directly attributable to this.
• myko 3y ago
  That's a feature, it is by design and some folks like it. I do. Surprising to hear people are hitting your inbox with the oddball period.
  • rcarmo 3y ago
    I get HUNDREDS of emails that I never signed up for due to this. If Gmail bounced them (as it should), it would be a godsend.
• johnwalkr 3y ago
  The “+” aspect mostly works great but has some weird edge cases when other companies don’t accept them. For example, I have a few apple ids using this feature, from moving to different countries. Apple no longer allows new accounts using “+”. My existing accounts work for iCloud, app, store etc but they do not work for logging into Apple support.
  • remus 3y ago
    > The “+” aspect mostly works great but has some weird edge cases when other companies don’t accept them. I wish it was just edge cases! I've bumped into so many services that can't handle "+" in email addresses, some seem to be on purpose (presumably to prevent signing up multiple accounts to the same address) but others are just old school bugs. My fav is services that send the email address to an API including the email address as a URL parameter, but forget to escape the email address so the + gets butchered in the process.
  • Steuard 3y ago
    Oh, yikes: when did the + stop working for Apple support? That's going to bite me at some point. (And in general, yeah: I've had multiple cases over the years where the "+" only caused problems after signup. One of several reasons that I eventually stopped using those forms.) And just to put it out there: "+" addresses aren't specifically a Gmail thing, they've been supported by most(?) mail servers for a very long time.
    • johnwalkr 3y ago
      I think it stopped working about 3 years ago for me. I was in Japan for 10 years and moved last year, so I have been using a +japan address with apple. Of course in that time I've been using icloud and iphotos so I changed the region to my current country rather than make yet another account. I also removed the "non+" gmail address from a very old apple id thinking I could then attach that gmail address. Apple told me it would take a few months for the system to let me. It's been a nightmare. Apple lets account creation succeed without email verification and with SMS verification. So with my very common name, as soon Apple allows it, someone with a similar name uses my email to make an apple id, preventing me from using it. Without knowing or owning their phone number, it's impossible for me to fix. It takes 2-3 weeks and multiple hour long phone calls with apple to free the email again, at which point someone else uses it and the process repeats. Every phone call is horrible, it is really confusing to explain the problem. Every phone call starts with the support staff believing I am typo'ing my email address. After a few times I gave up trying to fix it.
• causi 3y ago
  This is a great reminder that Gmail ignores dots on the left side of the @ symbol, which means I am constantly getting e-mail for other people. Which can create problems with services who don't consider them the same. A decade or so ago I had an awful time trying to sort out two of my Xbox Live accounts that only varied by the dot, and couldn't figure out why I was still being charged when my account page said it was canceled.
• nytesky 3y ago
  The “+” alias feature rarely works for me when registering for sights. They say invalid. I have used “.” Variations to create multiple accounts on a service. I wonder what the limit is? Can I do …first.name@ and first……name@ and so on for infinite names! iCloud has auto anonymous emailing with plus, Firefox does to, but tying my services to such a feature rather than even just an email seems fragile.