GMail Can't Read a Period

shrike 16 years ago |

Not a bug. Feature. GMail ignores periods in email addresses. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/1-awesome-gmail-tip-you-dont-kn...

It isn't possible for the accounts michael.laccetti@gma.. and michaellaccetti@gma.. to belong to different users, as far as Google is concerned it's the same user.

haseman 16 years ago | |

Yup. Feature. Allows you to do all sorts of fun things...like signing up for many twitter accounts on one gmail address.

mustpax 16 years ago | | |

You can also use the +subscript feature for that. youremail+twitter1@gmail.com youremail+twitter2@gmail.com. Allows you to filter based on account as well.

Poiesis 16 years ago | | |

Except it's still distressingly common for braindead email address validation scripts to not accept the plus character.

So, I'll use the plus to sign up for something that may produce junk (to differentiate it), and then attempt to unsubscribe--producing an error as the web form email validation to unsubscribe doesn't accept the plus. Doh!

eli 16 years ago |

I think the other michael doesn't know his own email address.

buugs 16 years ago | |

Most definitely, or it is indeed spam as spammers seem to be getting really tricky these days.

weeksie 16 years ago |

Because of this little feature I've ended up on several ultra right wing mailing lists (subscriptions that were meant for someone who shares my name, obviously). It's horrifying and hilarious at the same time.

JacobAldridge 16 years ago | |

Hilarious, until you think it's possibly also happening in reverse.

The weeksie doppleganger is probably over on a fox news forum talking about how the communists at Google are pumping him with their liberal agenda, sending through masses of material about 'brainwashing' and 'criminal gangs' (I mean 'programming' and 'Hacker News').

weeksie 16 years ago | | |

Oh, I think that makes it even more hilarious.

terrellm 16 years ago |

My wife has firstnamelastname@gmail.com and she is constantly getting emails to firstname.lastname@gmail.com intended for someone in another state.

According to http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe... : "Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address; they'll all go to your inbox, and only yours"

vgoel 16 years ago |

It is a feature of Gmail and I think that it is great. Person_A registers franz.josef@gmail.com. All mail sent to franzjosef@, franz.josef@, franzjos.ef@, fra.nzjosef@ will end up in person A's Gmail account. Now someone wishing to send an e-mail to another Franz Josef (Person_B) but not being sure of his Gmail address guesses and sends it to Person A's Gmail address. Not Google's fault. Google will not let let another person register franzjosef@ with or without a period in any location. All periods are ignored.

djehuty 16 years ago |

To all the commenters here saying "it's not a bug it's a feature":

Ok, but how did the other michael sign up with the non-period name? That's the bug, surely?

callahad 16 years ago | |

He probably didn't. He probably meant @ymail, or firstlast3@gmail or some other permutation.

At least, that's been the case for most of the misdirected email I've received.

Timothee 16 years ago |

As said by others, this is a feature. I remember that this problem really happened at the very beginning of Gmail (2004) but it was quickly sorted out once they realized that some people had managed to sign up with different accounts that were actually the same.

martingordon 16 years ago |

For a while I was getting emails that were sent to <me>@googlemail.com (I have <me>@gmail.com) destined for someone in the UK, including flight confirmations and subway card top up reminders. Either that guy didn't know his email address when he booked his flight and registered for a few other things, or something was up with Google's handling of GMail/Google Mail addresses.

sankara 16 years ago |

Just a theory. Could it be that google allowed dot as legitimate characters (ie. i.rock and irock are completely different) during the initial launch of Gmail and then moved to the present setting of ignoring dots? [Just tried creating a new account very similar to my existing one and I couldn't do that. This suggests this is not an existing bug for sure.]

sganesh 16 years ago |

I have the same issue with gmail. I have fn.ln@gmail and all of the emails for fnln@gmail shows up in my inbox. Oh, the info that shows up are his pay information, job offers ... I don't use this address often, but when i do log in, hilarity ensues :)