7 ms·

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
          (see my reply above)
      • Aaargh20318 3y ago
        Do a password recovery, log in and simply delete the account. I had to do this once when someone signed up to FB with my email address. It actually was an eye opening experience as to how much data FB collects from everyone. Now keep in mind that: 1) I don't have a FB account myself 2) This person signed up with my email address (which is <something-generic>@gmail.com), but their name is completely different from mine 3) They didn't even speak the same language, when I logged in to the new account the whole thing was in Swedish or something like it. So nothing at all linking the account to me, except a misspelled e-mail address. When I logged in, FB was happy to suggest I friend a whole bunch of people I know IRL. Including people that do not know the e-mail address used. Absolutely crazy. How were they able to link me to these people when I was signed in to a complete stranger's account?
        • 3y ago
  • jug 3y ago
    LOL this reminds me of a hilarious bug (but only in hindsight!) I had with Discord just three days ago! I tried to login to Discord. It detected a novel browser or location. Sure, this stuff can happen. It wanted to confirm that I was still me and asked me for my e-mail address. I gave it and it said "This e-mail address is already registered". What. Of course it is. It's me. Mine. The one I have registered with you. Since I have a few useful things tied to Discord, I felt my pulse go up. I googled for answers, found a Reddit thread with this specific problem. They said "Hey, if you use Gmail you can use the dots-are-ignored-feature to give Discord a "new" mail that will still go to you, allowing you to verify it!" (https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/12makhd/verify_email_already_registered/ https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/12makhd/verify_...) Sounded clever so I gave it a fore.name.sur.name@gmail.com variant. Sure enough, I got the mail. I logged in. I gasped as I realized Discord had now created a new, empty user for me! It somehow thought I was a brand new user despite this was only a user account _verification_ due to changed IP or whatever to begin with. I tried logging in to my original account once more and now I somehow got in! The verification on my new account had somehow triggered (cookie? I have no idea) that I was trustworthy again. Phew! I promptly deleted the new-account-going-to-same-mail and breathed normally again...
    • Panzer04 3y ago
      I've done this at least twice for the same reasons, and it's lead to me pulling my number off discord twice now. It's stupid how similar logging in and creating an account look.
    • alduin32 3y ago
      > I promptly deleted the new-account-going-to-same-mail and breathed normally again... I think at that point I would just have been too scared that this would cascade-delete the old account as well ^^
    • TheHumanist 3y ago
      I hadn't thought of getting possibly locked out of Discord for something so stupid. I have so much going on in there as far as dev comms... That makes me nervous now. Is there a way to export anything just in case?
  • galactus 3y ago
    I have exactly the same problem, and it has made my gmail account almost unusable. I have at least 150 unwanted emails per day (80% of them get caught by the spam filter)
  • InsomniacL 3y ago
    I don't understand how anyone else can register a facebook account with f.o.o@gmail.com if you own it just as much as you own foo@gmail.com.
    • adrianmsmith 3y ago
      The trouble is that Facebook doesn't know every email providers rules and which email addresses the email provider considers equivalent. So for Facebook, foo@gmail.com and f.o.o@gmail.com are two separate addresses (and indeed foo@hotmail.com and f.o.o@hotmail.com probably really are two separate addresses probably controlled by two different people). You're right that if Facebook required the email to be verified (by sending an email to it) before it could be used with Facebook then two different people wouldn't be able to have two separate Facebook accounts with one of them having an email address controlled by someone else. However, Facebook, in order to "reduce friction" and "reduce time to first value" is happy for you to use an unverified email address and they're happy to send a variety of emails to that address (including lots of emails telling you to finally verify that address).
      • InsomniacL 3y ago
        That's not true. I've just gone to facebook clicked register new account Entered Name, DOB, Email Now I'm stuck, can't proceed past "Enter the code from your email" and going to https://facebook.com https://facebook.com in a new browser tab takes be back to the "enter code from email page". I doubt they will send any chaser emails but I will report back in some time
        • c0pium 3y ago
          I just did the same thing with the opposite behavior, you’re probably coming from a bad internet neighborhood. Facebook does a lot of reputation stuff in their login and onboarding flows.
        • adrianmsmith 3y ago
          I see, interesting! Maybe they've changed their system. Thanks for looking into this!
  • nmeofthestate 3y ago
    Bear in mind that since there are a lot of websites (hundreds at least), and you haven't signed up to all of them, you can end up getting emails from websites you didn't sign up for even, when you're not using Gmail. I doubt it makes this minor problem appreciably worse
  • jeroenhd 3y ago
    Facebook shouldn't be sending you those emails at all, to be honest, assuming you never clicked the verification button. That said, clicking the "report spam" button should allow you to unsubscribe from such emails without dealing with logins or whatnot. Gmail supports certain unsubscribe headers that'll automate the process, which should make getting rid of Facebook's spam a lot easier.
• 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..