Thanks! Hard to believe they would let this go. The email I receive that is intended for someone else is not something I would want others to see if I were them.
Are you sure you read that second link? This is not a bug.
Click on "Your address is similar but has more or fewer dots (.) or different capitalization." to expand the explanation.
We had to add a link to this support document to the security@google.com autoresponder because people misunderstand this behaviour so often (They think they're getting someone elses mail, but someone just sent it to the wrong address).
Not true. I have a "john.doe@gmail.com" account that is quite old and in the past year someone created the same account without the dot (johndoe@gmail.com), or at least started using it in the past year. I get email from one of their senders, or a copy I presume, to this day!
Perhaps the emails you received were misaddressed. I'm fairly certain that you were never able to create similar emails which differed only by periods.
