
Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses - RocketSyntax
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en
======
Santosh83
I have been getting financial emails from several people for many years at my
GMail ID. They apparently have given my address but without the dot.

But what mystifies me is how these people keep going for years without ever
realising they aren't getting account transaction emails (from their banks),
notifications of stock trades, even OTP emails etc. How is it possible for
people to use these services for years without ever wondering _why_ they
aren't getting the routine emails they're supposed to get or even why they
aren't getting the OTP email they had generated?

Also none of the institutions I contacted to ask their clients to update their
correct email bothered to do so. On the contrary they sent me back what looked
like automated replies asking if their customer service was satisfactory.

At this point I'm sorely tempted to delete my email and start over with
another service provider. The nuisance of having to delete almost a dozen
emails not meant for you every single day is annoying to say the least. At
least with spam you get it sent to spam folder and there it stays.
Confidential emails not meant for you is awkward and uncomfortable to have to
put up with.

~~~
liquidgecka
Been there. I posted about this before but I own a 5 character common first
and last name @gmail.com address. I get misdirected emails _constantly_.

Usually I am polite about it and let people know, but sometimes I make a game
of it. I was invited to participate in a drum circle with an offer to pay for
my flight to which I replied that I would love to join, but they would also
have to pay for drum lessons. I got a mother insisting that I come home for
the weekend to which I replied that I am home, perhaps she hadn't knocked hard
enough.. etc.

At one point I got like 15 emails deriding me and my choice to "not support
firefighters". Turns out that a member of a city council had listed his email
as councilman.<me>@gmail.com and most people just ignored everything before
that period. I took it as a challenge to see what the most outlandish thing I
could say was that would be believed. Some of the better attempts: "My wife
had an affair with a firefighter once!" and "My house has never burned down,
why do we even need these guys?".. etc.

With most of the financial emails you can unsubscribe at least. =/

~~~
boring_twenties
Unsubscribe, man, I'm jealous.

Some dude 2,000 miles away from me has bought a Lexus and now I get regular
emails about the status of his vehicle, receipts for all work done to it, and
reminders of all maintenance _not_ done to it. For a year and counting.

Each email helpfully includes instructions for unsubscribing: First, you log
into the Lexus app...

I finally got fed up with it and reported them to abuse@.

~~~
williamscales
Well, since you have the email, you can log in to the Lexus app. Then you
could turn off the notifications.

~~~
boring_twenties
I'm not sure about this but wouldn't that be a felony?

~~~
treeman79
Yes.

99.9% chance no one would care. But people do freak out over this stuff.

Knew one guy that saw that a Bank got hacked on the news. Did an nslookup or
similar to check the banks site.

He was arrested the next day and expelled from college for hacking the bank.

Eventually all got cleared up, but screwed up a year of his life

~~~
dtparr
He got expelled for running a DNS query?

Do you mean nmap?

~~~
treeman79
Maybe. Was awhile ago

------
robbyking
A coworker of mine got an email once containing important scholarship
information intended for a high school kid in Florida. He did a little looking
online and found the kid's and his parent's actual email addresses and
forwarded the email to them.

So here's where it gets weird/dumb: the kid replies to my friend and his
parents and says, "hey mom, you put the wrong email address on my application,
there's no dot in mine."

So my coworker, being the only tech savvy person on the thread replies. "Well,
actually, [...]" and explains how dots are(n't) handled in Gmail address. Then
the parents then reply and write, "but that's your old Gmail address, we had
to get you a new one when we moved to Florida."

At this point my coworker gave up and the kid presumably lost his scholarship
because his family didn't know you could keep your Gmail address when you
moved houses.

(If you're reading this, hi Jake H.!)

~~~
Negitivefrags
I have a common last name and my email is my first initial and my last name.

I get so much misdirected mail that I don’t even try to help these people.

I hope John gets to his zoom interview for Deputy Chief of Police later today,
because I’m not going to tell him about it.

~~~
fnl
Happens to me all the time, because my name is fairly common. Weird that
Google wont "fix" that.

~~~
esnard
Out of curiosity, what would a "fix" look like?

~~~
laurent92
Never showing the email address to anyone, just letting you scan a QR code, or
copy-paste a rich-text non-editable widget and passing it around. It is the
same idea as not showing the URL in the address bar, it solves 1 major problem
and raises dozen others.

------
paxys
Everyone in this thread is replying with instances of receiving emails meant
for other people, but dots have nothing to do with that. It's people typing in
the wrong email address in a signup page (with dots or without), and the
service not verifying it. The latter is what really needs to be fixed.

I personally find this Gmail feature (as well as the ability to append
+anything to your email address) extremely useful.

~~~
bstrong
In my experience, it's mostly the situations where people give their emails in
person that are a problem: Receipts from in-store purchases (and in-store
credit card signups), hotel reservations and rewards programs, EMR signups,
lawyers offices, banks, realtors, etc.

Websites are pretty good at verifying email addresses these days. The real
world, not so much. The super funny part is when you try to ask the
bank/doctor/etc. to stop sending someone else's personal info to your email
address, and they tell you they can't make that change since you aren't the
account owner.

------
kjhughes
I think that companies' failure to verify their users' email addresses during
signup is a serious problem that goes beyond any dot confusion.

When John Smith signs up for an account using JohnSmith@gmail.com (or
John.Smith@gmail.com), and the company trusts John Smith to have provided the
email address accurately, three parties are affected: Both John Smiths and the
company itself. Yes, verifying email address creates a bit more signup
friction, but the consequences of getting it wrong way outweigh that friction
for the privacy risk and confusion it causes (unless all the company cares
about is a meaningless sign-up metric).

~~~
aimor
Amazon has been sending me someone else's order details for about a year now.
It's crazy to me for multiple reasons:

1\. They send this information (order details, name, address, tracking
numbers, receipt) without requiring a confirmation email. In fact, in their
system the email on the other guy's account is labeled "unverified".

2\. The emails contain no way to stop future emails. There's no "unsubscribe",
"this is not me", "contact us", etc. Every link is to an Amazon page which
expects the user to be logged in to the correct account.

3\. The system does not sufficiently lock old accounts when the account email
is reused. One suggestion from Amazon was to create a new account using my
email, which should lock the other account. This did not happen, so now there
are two accounts able to send Amazon emails to me with no way to tell them
apart.

4\. The Amazon website doesn't verify the user's account before displaying
order details. If I click on a link from the other person's order return (or
other types of links), Amazon opens up to my account but displays information
from their order. It's confusing to see someone else's "refund status"
alongside my account name on the official Amazon.com site.

5\. Getting this fixed is a pain in the ass. I call, they say they'll fix it.
I call, they suggest something else. I call, they escalate, try something else
again. I chat, can't be handled over chat, they call me, try another thing.
I'm not sure why they won't remove the email from his account or contact him
and ask him to remove it.

------
ghastmaster
This is indeed the case. I have checked it myself. The link below shows how
this can be used maliciously.

[https://jameshfisher.com/2018/04/07/the-dots-do-matter-
how-t...](https://jameshfisher.com/2018/04/07/the-dots-do-matter-how-to-scam-
a-gmail-user/)

I do not know if this has been mitigated.

~~~
tialaramex
James is wrong, this is Netflix's fault. The same "scam" would work under a
variety of circumstances because Netflix relies on something it has no reason
to believe is true. Maybe you signed up to Netflix but your house mate thinks
she did, she gets an email because of Eve, now you're both paying for Netflix,
but actually she's paying for Eve's account.

Netflix could make this mistake with postal addresses even, if for some reason
they used postal addresses. You get a letter from Netflix, you don't notice
it's addressed to Eve, who had stupidly written your address instead of hers,
you pay for her Netflix.

This is a data protection violation, data processors have a duty to take
reasonable care that the personal information they have about data subjects is
correct. If you need it, make sure it's accurate. If you don't need it, don't
collect it.

~~~
Spivak
This is actually Google's fault. Because Google is large enough Netflix could
be nice and have special handling for Gmail addresses but this would be going
against the email RFC that says $inbox1+$subaddr@domain ==
$inbox2+$subaddr@domain iff $inbox1 and $inbox2 are _identical_.

Netflix has zero idea how any particular email operator mangles or maps
inboxes to actual users. Apple's private email service maps all sorts of
inboxes to the same actual person. Mailinator maps every address to everyone.

~~~
robjan
This is Netflix's fault for not verifying email addresses before taking
payment details for a recurring subscription.

~~~
Spivak
True, Netflix should have verified that the person signing up could actually
receive an email at the address they gave.

But _in addition_ Netflix is right to allow the creation of two accounts where
the difference is only dots.

------
devy
Dots does matter in GSuite's email addresses (those are the email addresses
for enterprise via work or school.)

Also in the email name part of the email address, anything after + (plug sign)
and before the @ (at sign) don't matter either. [1] This is the same behavior
for personal Gmail and GSuite email (Gmail for enterprises)

[1]: [https://gizmodo.com/how-to-use-the-infinite-number-of-
email-...](https://gizmodo.com/how-to-use-the-infinite-number-of-email-
addresses-gmail-1609458192)

~~~
kevincox
It definitely is. For example I get a lot of emails sent to me+ni@mydomian for
"Not Important" which I use kind of like an RSS reader. They never appear in
my inbox and I catch up on them every once and a while.

You can do this for a wide variety of things and combine it with filters to
get a lot of extra value from your email.

------
sriku
Not only do dots not matter, you can suffix "+<anything>" to your user name
before the "@gmail.com" and it will still come to your email address. I
actually love this "+" feature and use it a lot .. like send an email to
"+bookmark@gmail.com" to bookmark a link, or register with "+nospam" and setup
a filter for that address if anyone sends me email on that.

This is supported by icloud and fastmail too.

~~~
sydd
Also a good check if the site has some sloppy implementation. More than once
have I seen that my "+" email was not accepted because of invalid characters.
I take this as a sign to not trust the site's security too.

~~~
ben0x539
If I were a site accepting email addresses, I could see rejecting "+" stuff
because chances are it's people trying to pull something funny like
registering multiple accounts when I only want one per email address. If I
were less confrontational I might just silently strip the "+" part.

~~~
wlll
Sites that do any of that stuff are infuriating. Great if that's what you're
going for.

~~~
ben0x539
My understanding is that it's okay to be infuriating if I have an analytics
query or something claiming that it'll not affect 99ish % of users and also
save customer support a bunch of work.

------
treebornfrog
Got a guy with my same first name and surname.

Been getting his bank statements, his amazon orders, class emails, share
purchases/sales.

Its a joke.

Edit: been happening for around 5 years.

Its also entertaining at the same time to see what he's doing on another
continent. I'm torn, dammit Google!

~~~
Implicated
I have this problem, except it's a whole nation (seemingly) of people due to
how common my last name is in a specific country.

My address is [first initial][last name]@gmail so anyone with a first name
that starts with the same letter as mine and the same last name (which, there
are SO MANY).

I get;

job offers family photos (I typically respond letting these people know
they're not getting through to whoever they're intending) verizon bills (I'm
also a verizon customer and they absolutely refuse to take my email off of the
other two accounts - I've also texted both accounts since they're numbers have
come through various times in the correspondences and they don't even
acknowledge my communication let alone update their accounts - they're always
late on their payments, but have the newest iPhone's all the time :D) purchase
receipts from so many retailers I don't keep track (some of these people have
real silly amounts of money) auto purchase receipts bank emails lease offers
(just today I had to respond to a leasing agent who was trying to let someone
know they got a place they were trying to rent in NYC for crazy money)

It's mind blowing to me how many people get their email address wrong and miss
so many important emails, seemingly without ever realizing it.

------
runxel
There is also the alias of googlemail.com on the domain level... Always a
cause of big headaches.

    
    
      johnsmith@gmail.com
      john.smith@gmail.com
      johnsm.ith+foobar@gmail.com
      j.oh.nsmith@googlemail.com
    
    

all are pointing to the same logical email address.

~~~
saagarjha
The email you see in my profile is backed by a Gmail account, but I doubt you
would know that if I didn't tell you. Hopefully I haven't made your headache
worse ;)

~~~
hundchenkatze
You can see that it's backed by gmail by looking at the MX records.

[https://www.whatsmydns.net/#MX/saagarjha.com](https://www.whatsmydns.net/#MX/saagarjha.com)

------
chrisgd
My email is firstlast I use first.last for subscriptions I am unsure I want to
keep. I can then filter out based on to address and also use diff combinations
when I already know I don’t want them contacting me (firs.tlast) for example

~~~
dhritzkiv
If you use the + character (e.g. `firstlast+subscriptions`) it'll still arrive
to your `firstlast` inbox, but will allow you to filter it more meaningfully.

~~~
jumhyn
I've been using this trick for a while (usually
'firstlast+per_service_identifier') and I've encountered more than a few
systems which erroneously claim that any email address containing a '+' is
invalid.

~~~
moviuro
That's why I now own my domain, and added the first([\\.-]suffix)?@last.tld ->
first@last.tld mapping at my provider.

For selfhosting, there's `recipient_delimiter = +-.` in postfix' config. [0]

The most infuriating ones are those where you can subscribe with the '+', but
the unsubscribe function errors on it.

[0] [https://try.popho.be/email.html](https://try.popho.be/email.html)

~~~
davinic
Also in many cases I am allowed to proceed with the +, but never receive
confirmation emails because the sending system chokes.

------
AaronFriel
Dots do matter in G Suite email addresses, and that can be quite confusing for
people that know this trick.

------
zaksoup
This is the source of a low-impact but still interesting scam: Scammer signs
up for netflix free trial with "your" email (but it's really some _new_
combination with different dots). Scammer runs out the free trial. YOU get an
email saying "gotta pay for netflix." You're confused but chalk it up to some
computer glitch somewhere and click the link to log in. Your password isn't
taking but that's fine you just reset it. Finally, you're logged in, and you
plug in your credit card and everything seems fine. You maybe don't even
notice the _two_ charges on your next credit card bill.

Yes, it's definitely convenient that you can have "multiple" email addresses
that all point to the same inbox, but the issue is that identity providers
don't treat them as all the same logical email address which creates
opportunities for scams like these or worse.

------
thrill
90% of the spam I get when I occasionally review it has dropped the dot in
some silly effort to canonicalize my address, so yeah, the dot matters, as I
filter the non-dotted address.

~~~
stan_rogers
Same here. The "no dot goes to trash" rule catches an awful lot of spam.

------
renewiltord
Someone registered for Facebook with myname@gmail.com. I'd registered with
my.name@gmail.com and when I got the email that I'd added the account I
clicked yes before reading (that's a mistake you make at most once) and now
that guy has a Facebook account I can't log in to and I can't remove this
email from the account and I can't remove the notifications either.

Part of the reason is that Facebook verifies you're the owner of the email if
you say "someone else has my email" by sending you an email which you have to
reply to. But Google will reply to all of them with the canonical sign-up so
mine has my.name@gmail.com that the reply goes out with, which doesn't match
so I'm stuck marking all Facebook notifications as spam.

~~~
jeffbee
In gmail, open the settings, go to "Accounts", add an address to "Send mail as
..." then you can send mail with as many dots as you like.

~~~
renewiltord
Could have sworn I tried this. Let me give it another shot! Thank you!

EDIT: Interesting, they no longer send me that email. Probably got flagged.

------
headShrinker
I used to have a dot in my gmail address then I started receiving messages to
my address without the dot. The messages were from people I didn't know to
people I didn't know. I thought there was something wrong and I was receiving
other peoples messages.

And this is where it gets weird... I was.

Just not because of the dot. My gmail handle is pretty short, 6 chars. First
name last initial, pretty cool. I got it during the early in the first beta
year, (gmail was beta for like 10 years.) However 10 years later I'm now
receiving emails in german, parking tickets from cities I've never been, paid
subscriptions, access to gmail and facebook accounts because people set my
gmail handle as their recovery address. I can even unlock a guys car from the
manufacturers web UI whom I've never met. The best/worst by far is the time
the FBI reached out to me, which I thought was some bad phishing attempt and
replied mildly taunting them. However, it was in fact a real FBI agent who
wrote back noticeably annoyed at my flippant response. There was a vailed
threat that if I don't take this seriously things would happen. A lump formed
in my throat. I called them and for 5 minutes it was kind of scary. I found
out a doctor had been using my email handle for oxytocin prescriptions and
they were investigating this doctor... I explained that I had received other
messages for this doctor and approximated his age and name, explained my short
desirable email address, at which point the agent broke their stern
professional tone and we shared a little chuckle.

------
blindm
I love the way most services treat dotted addresses as separate addresses. So
for example if you wanted multiple accounts on $service you could register the
following:

    
    
        john.doe@gmail.com
        j.ohndoe@gmail.com
        jo.hndoe@gmail.com
        joh.ndoe@gmail.com
        johnd.oe@gmail.com
        johndo.e@gmail.com
    

And now you have six accounts, with the bonus of receiving mail in the same
inbox for each account!

~~~
acruns
You can also use @googlemail.com domain name instead of @gmail.com to double
the number of email addresses.

~~~
blindm
Yes, you could do even more shenanigans registering with the following:

    
    
        john.doe+uniquestring@gmail.com
        j.ohndoe+uniquestring@gmail.com
        jo.hndoe+uniquestring@gmail.com
        joh.ndoe+uniquestring@gmail.com
        johnd.oe+uniquestring@gmail.com
        johndo.e+uniquestring@gmail.com
    
        john.doe+uniquestring@@googlemail.com
        j.ohndoe+uniquestring@@googlemail.com
        jo.hndoe+uniquestring@@googlemail.com
        joh.ndoe+uniquestring@@googlemail.com
        johnd.oe+uniquestring@@googlemail.com
        johndo.e+uniquestring@@googlemail.com

~~~
blindm
Oops there's a mistake there; there's supposed to be just one `@` symbol!

------
gdrift
I was blocked from my gmail account for attempting to log in without the dot.
My address is firstname.lastname@gmail. Had it for years. When I learned that
dots don't matter I tried to log in without the dot and was immediately
blocked for suspicious behavior. Luckily it wasn't used for anything
important. Few months later the block was removed. Never tried to play with
the dots again since.

------
HelloNurse
The obvious address of <my common name>.<my very common surname>@gmail.com was
still available a couple of years after Gmail was introduced, and I rushed to
register it despite already getting _a little_ unintended email on other
predictable free mail addresses.

I couldn't anticipate the density of misplaced email (allowing me to link
multiple parties to the same idiot), the personal insistence of some people
(come on, it's me! Your friend —! What do you mean by "I don't know you"?),
the ready-made drama (in varied roles: vanished boyfriend, investor in shady
businesses, councilman, delinquent debtor...), the quality of delicate
misplaced information (with medical records and resumes topping the more
obvious invoices, home addresses and bank letters) and the variety of accounts
(including e.g. Spotify and a couple of dating sites).

Over the years, I've noticed a slight decrease in incorrect addresses entered
by human beings matched by an increase of automated emails to incorrectly
registered accounts.

------
devendramistri
When I got out from college, i created my gmail account via a invitation link
from a friend (In 2006, there were invitation based sign-up). I created gmail
id without any dots in it and just firstnamelastname@gmail.com,

Later I joined as software engineer in a company, I came to know that good
email is firstname.lastname@company.bla format, so I wanted to have my gmail
id as firstname.lastname@gmail.com But it wasn't available. I was so desperate
to have it that I decided to email the person who owns it, so I emailed on the
id (having dot in it).

Guess What! I received my own email, requesting myself to handover the id.
Then I did some tests to know if dot is making any sense or not. so tested
like first.name.last.name etc.

Found this link way back then. Great to know that someone else found it after
so long :)

------
cmckn
I signed up years ago with a dot in my username, before I knew this. Folks can
reach me sans dot, but my username still has the dot (so, outgoing mail does
too). It bothers me a lot!

If there is a Googler reading this with the power to remove the dot from my
username, please email me (with or without the dot) :)

~~~
jeffbee
You misunderstand the article. Your username has no dots, and dots are allowed
but ignored when your username is referenced (when logging in, when receiving
messages, etc). Nobody can remove the dots from your username because they
aren't there in the first place.

If you just want a different number of dots in your outbound mails, go to the
gmail settings and add a new presentation under "Send mail as ..." and set it
as the default.

~~~
cmckn
> add a new presentation under "Send mail as ..." and set it as the default.

That's what I needed -- thanks! The dot still shows in my Gmail profile, and
it's not possible to remove the "Send mail as..." address with the dot; which
is odd. But yes I'm also able to log in without the dot.

------
_kst_
I have a similar issue, though it's not related to Gmail.

I registered an obvious joke email address from a free service. I'm not going
to type it here, but imagine something similar to "fakeaddress@example.com".
(I could have used a gmail address for the same purpose.)

Occasionally someone will fill out an online form that asks for an email
address, and decide to use an obvious fake, assuming that any emails will go
into the proverbial bit bucket. That's why I sometimes get emails about
someone's health insurance or airline tickets.

It can get a bit frustrating when online support forms insist on asking for
account information when the whole point is that I don't have an account.

(Yes, I know I set myself up for this.)

------
plibither8
That, and '@googlemail.com'. example@gmail.com is equivalent to
example@googlemail.com.

~~~
bjohnson225
@googlemail.com was the default address for a few years in the UK because of a
legal dispute. If you sent an email it'd always come from the longer domain.

~~~
judge2020
For reference:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/oct/19/news.busi...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/oct/19/news.business)

------
joncrane
What about + signs? That's the trick I use.

~~~
caseysoftware
In theory, providers/servers should ignore everything from the + to the @ so
that should work just about everywhere else. And since most forms don't filter
that out, you can make numerous "unique" addresses connected to a single one.

Now odds are, someone is going to respond with the one service where the +
becomes significant..

~~~
pricechild
> providers/servers should ignore everything from the + to the @

Why? I'm not sure it has ever been a standard and it's certainly not a default
implementation for most providers?

~~~
moviuro
A quick google search returns [https://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/plus-signs-
in-email-addr...](https://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/plus-signs-in-email-
addresses.html) . Although not standard, its use is "legal"

------
randtrain34
I'm surprised that the "+" operator isn't commonly known either in gmail (eg.
I can type "johnsmith+345@gmail.com", and mail sent to that address will
redirect to "johnsmith@gmail.com"

------
reallydontask
I think that for Enterprise customers (G-Suite) dots might matter as I tried
to create a new (bot) account in Github with my email sans dots and I never
received the email (email was not @gmail.com)

~~~
lstamour
This is mentioned in the article, yes. It is likely to preserve backwards
compatibility with pre-existing email addresses from before the switch to
Gmail.

------
lilSebastian
I registered forename.surname@gmail.com, I often get mail for someone else
forenamesurname@gmail.com. I noe have no idea who else they are routing email
intended to the former.

------
fsflover
Older discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16781959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16781959)

------
slartibardfast0
I have a first.last@gmail address from the beta, and after numerous
misunderstandings I've learned to use very precise language when attempting to
help:

First establish that they're speaking to the wrong person.

Then suggest the nature of their mistake is a simple omission of a letter or
number.

never offer a 'no big deal' or de-escalation until they've acknowledged the
problem, otherwise the real recipient will never get the email!

~~~
cwkoss
Reply with this - people are less likely to argue if they think you are a
robot:

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. A message
that you sent has not yet been delivered to one or more of its recipients
after more than 24 hours on the queue on mail.example.com.

The message identifier is: 1JYIJ1-0008Ew-JK

The date of the message is: <date>

The address to which the message has not yet been delivered is: <your email>.

~~~
slartibardfast0
oh I did try that approach! it was generally ignored completely except for one
hilariously angry person.

------
charwalker
It also disregards info after a + like:

validemail+ignored@gmail.com

You can sign up for sites like:

validemail+facebook@gmail.com

and it will still reach your inbox fine but be very obvious if your info is
sold or stolen.

------
dave84
I spent far too much of my time trying to explain this to Humanity.com’s
support after someone created an account using a dotless variant of my email.
I didn’t want to freeze the guy out of his account as I imagine he was using
it for shift work notifications but in the end they just told me to change the
password. Their support repeatedly insisted that gmail was broken and I should
contact Google.

~~~
Spivak
Because this is really Google's problem. If someone gives you an email address
you're not supposed to touch anything before the '@' and assume that if the
inboxes aren't exactly identical then they are separate addresses. Because on
some (most) mail servers they will be separate.

Humanity is guilty of not actually verifying ownership/control of the inbox
before letting the person attach it to their account but they were absolutely
right to treat it as a separate address.

~~~
dave84
Obviously. My issues is the difficulty in explaining this to tech support even
when confronted with evidence.

------
miguelmota
It's also an old trick that people do in order to create a lot of accounts on
websites (typically for malicious reasons) without having to create many
disposable email. They use a combination of periods and plus signs in the
email label. On top of that they can use the alias googlemail.com instead of
gmail.com to create more accounts on websites.

------
dinkleberg
Glad to know I'm not alone in being a john.smith@gmail.com and receiving
emails for johnsmith@gmail.com. For a while I was concerned there was some
issue where there was an existing johnsmith@gmail.com before I created mine
and gmail just fused them. But it seems more likely whoever this other
johnsmith is, they just think they have this email.

------
miguelrochefort
I created my Gmail account as firstname.lastname@gmail.com (by mistake), but I
always create accounts on website using firstnamelastname@gmail.com.

As a result, I often have problems when communicating by email with companies,
as they can't match origin of the email (firstname.lastname@gmail.com) to my
account email (firstnamelastname@gmail.com).

~~~
drivebycomment
You can change your default "from" and "reply-to" addresses:

[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370)

------
jameskilton
Except for when it does matter! GSuite accounts do care.

first.name@company.com is a different address than firstname@company.com.

I learned that one the hard way.

~~~
wil421
Yes the article mentions as an admin you could remove the dots but they always
matter.

------
dylanz
I receive incorrect email daily because of this. Early adopter problem for
early Gmail users. I could have had my first name at Gmail back in the day but
I thought “what’s wrong with Hotmail!?”. Same thing for Twitter, but I still
don’t use Twitter. I could have probably sold it for a pretty penny though.
Hindsight!

------
Asooka
That's pretty useful for giving out to sites that believe you can't have a +
in your email, but you still want to track who the address is shared with.
Does anyone know if you can make different filters for differently dotted
versions?

------
NewOrderNow
I used this to get cheap dreamhost service back in the day by signing up once
with my email with the dot and once without the dot. I now use the account
without the dot permanently and it always throws me off. Worth it for the 1
year of savings :)

------
Brajeshwar
I have about 3 people sharing my Gmail Address to their banks, credit card,
insurances, etc.

------
lovetocode
I use a similar behavior with the plus symbol to identify who leaks me email
address.

------
fbn79
Good. So I can re-subscribe to the same tryout service again and again adding
dots to my address without the need of use disposable mailbox (banned for
sure) or create a new one time address.

------
znpy
I have been getting private data and private documents of people with my same
name because of this moronic feature.

And I can't trust Gmail anymore because of this.

------
sleepybrett
I got a bunch of mortgage documentation for another person with my name (i
assume they either are a 1-t brett (or a misheard brent, brad or brit) or
their email contains their middle initial or someone misheard their last name
over the phone ( there are several spellings for my last name that are more or
less homophones ).. either way I now have enough information to easily steal
their identity.

I feel like most, majorish, online services do email verification, but when
you are giving your email address to a someone over the phone, that's where
most of the problems start.

------
aasasd
> _Your Gmail address is unique. If anyone tries to create a Gmail account
> with a dotted version of your username, they 'll get an error saying the
> username is already taken._

Well then I'd like to know how someone keeps signing up for services with my
address, even though I never click any confirmation links. The email used for
signing up specifically differs from mine by a dot.

(Though I don't think I'll complain to Google, seeing as it's just a dedicated
address for shady sites, it's free, and Google aren't known for answering
complaints anyway.)

~~~
URSpider94
The reason is because those services don't use an email confirmation process,
either because they don't know better, or because they are email marketers who
are happy to have every address that they can get and don't really care who
gets their mail (the email equivalent of writing "OR CURRENT RESIDENT" on
postal mail)

------
Freeboots
Fun Fact: Dots DO matter in gmails search bar:

from:<some email>@gmail.com and from:<some>.<email>@gmail.com return different
results.

------
wkalt
If someone emails you without a dot and you reply from your dotted address, it
will look strange in the receiver's email client.

~~~
saagarjha
Depends on the client–the ones I use understand that people can reply back
with a different address than the one I sent an email to. (I frequently see
@cs.university.edu → @university.edu, or @gmail.com → @companyname.com.)

------
cylentwolf
This has only recently been a problem for me. There is a nice gentleman with
my same name who picked up the gmail address without the dot. He lives in
Arizona. Has a library membership. Plays in a softball league. I am not sure
how much of my email he gets. I haven't set up a filter yet but I will
eventually. I like seeing what my doppelganger is up to some times.

~~~
URSpider94
No, he did not "pick up" that address. Google won't issue a second address
that matches the concatenation of the characters without dots. So, if I have
john.smith@gmail.com, Google will not issue anyone else johnsmith@,
j.ohnsmith@, joh.nsmith@gmail.com or any other combination to another user.

What does often happen is that people FORGET what their actual email address
is when they hand it out to other people or write it down on forms. Or their
friends or family mis-remember it. Your doppleganger may have actually been
issued the address johnny.smith, or smith.johnny, but just forgets.

------
saeranv
Cool, so that means we all have infinite variations of our email addresses.

------
coder4life
yeah I've known and used this forever to trace sources of spam, etc

------
blackearl
You can add memos as well: jdoe+ExampleMemo@gmail.com

------
microtherion
I have an uncommon last name, and picked an uncommon handle, so most of my
accounts never get misaddressed e-mails.

But when I was younger and more foolish, I opened a mail account with a
flippant phrase as the handle, and apparently somebody used that phrase as a
"fake" e-mail address when signing up for the Trump campaign mailing list.

One thing I'm learning from that deluge of e-mails is that, no matter how
little I think of GOP voters, I cannot manage to treat them with the utter
contempt that the presidential family is treating them with.

------
hathym
not 100% true, gmail won't allow you to send to john....smith@gmail for
example

~~~
jeffbee
That's got more to do with gmail's composer than with their mailer. "foo +
bar@baz"@domain.net is a valid email address but gmail won't permit you to
type it in.

------
everyone
cool so johnsmith@gmailcom works? nice!

------
html5web
That’s not always true. I’ve sent an email from not Gmail service, it returned
the non-exists error

------
wayanon
I got an email from Australia with the appointment for my spousal visa
application, I'm also apparently looking for a new BMW in Cape Town and I also
have a partner I visit in Paris and we order Chicken McNuggets on Uber Eats.

------
rockyj
Then why did they allow someone else to create an email like mine without the
dot and I even get the occasional mail addressed to them. This is really
shady, specially for an important service like email.

~~~
tialaramex
They didn't. You get email because somebody either typo's their similar
address or they simply think that's their address when it isn't.

~~~
rockyj
Not sure, I contacted this person, since I got their phone number from one of
their emails (e.g. they registered for a hotel). I specifically asked them if
they made a typo, according to them they have been using this email for years
(maybe they lied but why would they).

~~~
YetAnotherNick
This is inconclusive test, and if you ask people whether they made a mistake
in the signup, they will likely answer no. Try to send a mail to that account,
and if you receive a reply that is a real test.

------
schwinn140
PREACH. This is hands-down the single largest reason why I abandoned my Gmail.
I receive countless people's credit applications, loan details, new credit
card details, bills, etc, credit collections, etc.

All because they have the same last name as me and opted to use a period in
their email address.

This is happening across multiple countries as well. Sadly, none of these
people ever receive their important messages because I gave up trying ages
ago.

How they continue to explain this away as a feature is beyond me. Google is
constantly pushing forward with various, and perhaps superficial,
security/privacy oriented initiatives yet here's one of their core products
offering up the most private details of others without zero care to fix it.
SMH

~~~
stingraycharles
This type of stuff happens all the time. I’m actually receiving all kinds of
internal information from a large insurance company from India, supposedly
because one of their employees is registered with a typo in the domain name,
which is my domain.

I can’t for the love of god make clear to these people that there must be a
dozen laws this violates. I see insurance application, invoices, disputes,
everything on at least a weekly basis.

I have no idea what my legal position in this is. I tried reaching out to the
senders, but I am afraid of reaching out to the C-levels directly because who
knows how they respond.

Bottom line, people make typos all the time, and it’s not just dots that cause
this. People are just terrible at email and email is terrible for sensitive
documents.

------
AltruisticGapHN
I still get occasional emails for `firstnamelastname@gmail.com` while I
registered `firstname.lastname@gmail.com`

Which seems to contradict what the article says, since the article suggests
anyone who registered my `firstnamelastname@gmail.com` would own mine.

Or is the article suggesting actually nobody ever registered
`firstnamelastname@gmail.com` and some idiots just think "oh i need to write
to firstname lastname" (one of many who share my firstname/lastname in French)
and they just compose that email address? I don't get it.

edit: but moral of the story I think it's really a bad idea to register based
on a real firstname/lastname -- I'm tired of getting junk ... and worse,
getting invoices for other people for a service I also use. I got confused
once and actually made a payment which was not meant for me >_>

~~~
brmgb
> Which seems to contradict what the article says, since the article suggests
> anyone who registered my `firstnamelastname@gmail.com` would own mine.

It doesn't. firstnamelastname@gmail.com is also your address. Nobody could
have registred it.

> Or is the article suggesting actually nobody ever registered
> `firstnamelastname@gmail.com` and some idiots just think "oh i need to write
> to firstname lastname" (one of many who share my firstname/lastname in
> French) and they just compose that email address? I don't get it.

Yes, that's what is happening. If you get unintended emails, their intended
destination is yet another address.

