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> I have multiple family members who have healthy memory, but can't accurately remember their email address everytime: the localpart, the domain, the syntax, ev
by rmunn 4mo ago
> I have multiple family members who have healthy memory, but can't accurately remember their email address everytime: the localpart, the domain, the syntax, everything.
I got Gmail early enough that I have (my first name) dot (my last name) at gmail dot com. About twenty years ago, I started getting strange emails. At first I thought they were spam, because they were addressed to me by name but I had never joined those sites. Eventually I figured out that they were addressed to (my first name) (my last name) at gmail dot com. Which Gmail treats as the same address as the one with a dot in between.
Since I had never ever given out a version of my email address without a dot in the middle, I eventually figured out that these emails were meant for someone else who shared the same first and last name as me. But since I don't think Gmail would allow one person to register john.example@gmail.com and then later allow someone else to register johnexample@gmail.com, my name doppelganger must have registered firstnamelastname@yahoo.com, and then forgot the domain and given out firstnamelastname@gmail.com when asked for an email address. And probably never noticed that they weren't receiving emails like "Dear customer, thank you for purchasing (product). Would you like to try (other product)?", so they never realized that they were giving out the wrong email address.
- jcranmer 4mo agoRandall estimates in the alt-text of https://xkcd.com/1279/ https://xkcd.com/1279/ that there's about ¾ of a million people who just use somebody else's email on gmail without realizing it's not their email address.
- Semaphor 4mo agoI also have first.last@gmail.com (which I don’t use anymore, and just keep around), I get all kinds of private mails. Contracts, invoices, confidential material, private photos. And of course, also automated signup mails, newsletters (which I make sure to block and report as spam, unsubscribing is a feature for newsletters that are opt-in), transactional mails etc. People really suck at knowing what their e-mail is. The private mails are down to 1/month, the others to ~3/week, but it used to be much higher for both categories. Oh and of course there is some kind of weird scam going on where spammers on German classifieds (Kleinanzeigen) send an e-mail to firstlast@gmail.com for whatever public first and last name of the lister is, and ask if the product is still available. No link, nothing. And all sent via gmail which has by an overwhelming majority become the biggest sender of spam for me. I guess they are trying to get someone to reply and then do some manual scam or something.
- f_fmail 4mo ago> my name doppelganger must have registered firstnamelastname@yahoo.com, and then forgot the domain Alternative explanation: A hastily scribbled "@ymail.com" (along with its relative infrequency) can look to many people like "@gmail.com".
- ycombiredd 4mo agoHey! Neat to see some more folks that have a story to tell about the oerhaps unintended side effects of the way the dot was implemented in gmail addresses. Reading these dot-related comments reminded me that I once made one here about how I was able to leverage this possibly asynchronous dot-handling at gmail. Because the story is a bittersweet sentimental one for me I had to go back and read it now, and though I am sitting here with bad allergies streaming down my face, it also felt really nice to remember that. I know this is a bit of a sideways comment, and I apologize for that but it isn't often I am overcome with emotion on HN, or on the topic of email addressing, and well, I appreciated the opportunity to re-read it now. Thanks. You might find my gmail dots story interesting too. It's a little long, but the dot-character portion begins about a third of the way down in my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46539424#46541149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46539424#46541149 Cheers!