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Both this post and the quoted one seem to be confused. Adding periods to a Gmail address never ever, since day one, went to a different mailbox. I would like t

Both this post and the quoted one seem to be confused. Adding periods to a Gmail address never ever, since day one, went to a different mailbox. I would like to see some of the evidence that two different people are logging in to accounts that are only different by periods.

dhosek 2mo ago
I doubt that there are likely cases of people having joe.smith@gmail.com and joesmith@gmail.com as distinct accounts, but I would note that for other domains hosted via gmail, in my experience, joe.smith@example.com and joesmith@example.com, say, would be treated as distinct mailboxes.
margalabargala 2mo ago
It's always since day 1 been gmail's stance that this was intended behavior. From the various reports, including by people aware of gmail's stance, gmail may have had a bug allowing it at some point.
- ludwik 2mo ago
  > From the various reports, including by people aware of gmail's stance, gmail may have had a bug allowing it at some point. I think these are simply people who cannot believe that someone might give out an email address they do not actually own, either because they are confused or because they make one up on the spot just to fill in a required form field. So when they receive messages intended for someone else but addressed to another variant of their own address, they treat that as proof that the intended recipient owns that variant. In reality, people giving out email addresses they do not own is extremely common. I see a lot of people swearing up and down that they have seen proof that such a Gmail bug exists. But whenever you dig into the details, it turns out that all they have actually seen is emails intended for someone else arriving in their inbox. There is never any direct evidence that two people were able to register two Gmail addresses that normalize to the same canonical address.

dhosek 2mo ago

I doubt that there are likely cases of people having joe.smith@gmail.com and joesmith@gmail.com as distinct accounts, but I would note that for other domains hosted via gmail, in my experience, joe.smith@example.com and joesmith@example.com, say, would be treated as distinct mailboxes.

margalabargala 2mo ago

It's always since day 1 been gmail's stance that this was intended behavior. From the various reports, including by people aware of gmail's stance, gmail may have had a bug allowing it at some point.

ludwik 2mo ago
> From the various reports, including by people aware of gmail's stance, gmail may have had a bug allowing it at some point. I think these are simply people who cannot believe that someone might give out an email address they do not actually own, either because they are confused or because they make one up on the spot just to fill in a required form field. So when they receive messages intended for someone else but addressed to another variant of their own address, they treat that as proof that the intended recipient owns that variant. In reality, people giving out email addresses they do not own is extremely common. I see a lot of people swearing up and down that they have seen proof that such a Gmail bug exists. But whenever you dig into the details, it turns out that all they have actually seen is emails intended for someone else arriving in their inbox. There is never any direct evidence that two people were able to register two Gmail addresses that normalize to the same canonical address.