

GMail Can't Read a Period - mlaccetti
http://www.laccetti.com/post/225198201/this-is-interesting

======
shrike
Not a bug. Feature. GMail ignores periods in email addresses.
[http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/1-awesome-gmail-tip-you-dont-
kn...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/1-awesome-gmail-tip-you-dont-know-about-
seriously/)

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

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

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

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weeksie
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
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
Oh, I think that makes it even more hilarious.

------
terrellm
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...](http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10313#)
: "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
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.

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djehuty
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
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
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.

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martingordon
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
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
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 :)

