I registered the `fname.lname` version very early on (before GMail was freely available), and while I do sometimes get emails sent to the `fnamelname` variant, which is consistent with someone having signed up with that variant, but is also consistent with someone just forgetting what their email address is (eg, they meant to type `fnamelname@hotmail.com`, or `fnamejlname`, or whatever). Especially since the mixups are very, veyr rare.
I can't rule out some weird collection of google bugs, but Occam's Razor suggests it's just an occasional typo. Especially until someone pulls up two screenshots of Google accounts showing colliding addresses.
The type of messages I receive are typically one of things like hotel, reservations, e-commerce shopping receipts. Likely someone misunderstands the address or misses a letter in between. Maybe alerting everone from myfirstnameAmylastname… to myfirstnameZmzlastname@gmail.com helps them take better care.
There is an older man, late 60s I think, with that name. I receive his email at least once a month. I have received sensitive emails, and I could no doubt perform some sort of computer fraud with those. He is not forgetting his email and putting a period in between the first letter of his name and the rest of it.
The Google ecosystem is vast. Somewhere within that ecosystem is one or more components that strips and/or ignores the dots, and for that split second his email and mine are identical.
In Google's account system, there's ~nothing you can do with just the username. You need a user id. The only way you can get a user id from a username is to call an RPC service to do the lookup. Doesn't matter whether it's for logging in, finding the account to deliver email to, creating an account, or whatever. Everything goes through that chokepoint. And that RPC server will always normalize the username at lookup time.
(I probably read that normalization code more often than anyone when working at Google on account security stuff, since that was the single place that had any reason to deal with usernames rather than user ids. That code was effectively immutable.)
I registered my Gmail account very shortly after the invite-only public beta began, so my Gmail username is simply my first name (in this example, it would be john@gmail.com). Believe me, I know a thing or two about confused people giving out email addresses that don't belong to them.
Importantly, the dot-normalization rule was there from the very beginning. You learned about it alongside all the other kooky ways Google had decided to reimagine email, including 1 GB of storage, conversation threading, and an interface with a prominent "Archive" button but no visible "Delete" button.
I would like to see some of the evidence that two different people are logging in to accounts that are only different by periods.
From the various reports, including by people aware of gmail's stance, gmail may have had a bug allowing it at some point.
People will forget their middle initial in their email (or others won’t notice it), or they’ll add firstlast as a recovery email or something.
Receiving other people’s email never stops being funny to me. Some of them are grumpy about it (especially the one who paid for and distributed “thousands” of poorly designed business cards.)
More have a sense of humor, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know a few of the other guys with the name over the years.
I paid 1.4€ or something on ebay back then for an invite and got a very common first.last@gmail.com, I’ve gotten everything, invoices, investment information, medical data, private photos, etc., though it has been getting better in the last few years, besides boring transactional mails and account recovery etc, I now only get such mails once or twice a year, used to be a monthly occurrence. Probably helped that I always wrote back and corrected those people ;)
I’m pretty sure the ignore the dot rule has always been there.
They've always had the "ignore the dot" semantics and it's sometimes even useful for testing, same as the plus-for-tagging.
On the plus side I did manage to save a name-cousin's immigration application one time when it went to spam on my account, I though that was a pretty interesting experience.
I also don't think google will let you actually register a new account without the dot, so the privacy leakage is much smaller than you might imagine.
According to Google themselves dots never mattered, not even in 2004.
1. https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/14668/why-does-g...
But no evidence has been presented, and it feels very unlikely to me.
There shall be none but mine on mine. I have received since day one, 2005 emails at my address meant for others. Their pay stubs, their tax forms, the prospectus for the apartments they want. If I feel like it, I warn them. If I don’t, it goes to the ether. That’s life.
Sucks that you won’t get your loan. Or notice that your bank needs you to fill in a form.
I never once considered that a gmail bug or intentional design decision could be at work there. TIL that they decided to cut down on the confusion by normalizing addresses.
I used to cop a lot of emails intended for first.last@ca.ibm.com to first.last@au.ibm.com.
Senders got lazy, selecting the top most user alphabetically from the list, and then I popped up and just... never changed their behavior or habits.
Would have been less concerned if the canuck version of me wasn't embedded in like a bank or something, and I was embedded with a completely different customer account.
Took it to management when I got "Hey are we good for the firewall to come down ahead of the pentest to <bank> next week" and they did nothing about it lmao.