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Gmail Mis.delivered?
An anonymous reader writes "Google doesn't make many mistakes but when it does, boy, are they doozies! The latest is that Gmail doesn't care about periods in usernames. So mail sent to anonymous.coward@gmail.com is also delivered to anonymouscoward@gmail.com, even though these are two separate mail accounts. Google admits Gmail doesn't see periods, but no word on a fix yet." Update: As may users have pointed out Ars has since corrected the story, stating that the original submitter was mistaken and the email was just improperly addressed.
I can't believe Google is disrespecting users with periods.
Since there is no word on a fix yet, it would be interesting if Microsoft rolls out a 3rd party patch which warns Gmail users when the recipient email address has periods in it.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
This couldv been a really neat feature.
I could signup a generic slashdot@gmail.com type account and then pass around multiple variations to different sites.
Depending upon the variation received I could determine which site leaked my mail.
I think the only way to rectify this is to start accounting for the period.
The cat is out of the bag so to speak.
liqbase
From what I understand, it's not two seperate accounts (i.e. ab@gmail.com and a.b@gmail.com are only one account and you can't register both, and you get mail that comes to either).
In addition, you can use it as a feature to filter mail. (i.e. if I'm abcdefg@gmail.com I can give out abcd.efg@gmail.com to friends and abc.defg@gmail.com to random websites, then filter the incoming mail automatically).
Feature, not a bug, in my opinion.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
I can't believe this is true, and they've done nothing about it!! I've had a couple of e-mails about jobs or something, addressed to someone with my name but no dot!! Unfortunately they're nothing interesting though ;-).
cmdr.taco@gmail.com
c.m.d.r.t.a.c.o@gmail.com
cm.dr.taco@gmail.com
I think you get it.
Bloopers like this make me check the calender, sounds like perfect April 1st Slashdot news.
It's a damn shame mikeroger doesn't have a racier life, it would be awesome.
Google's response, btw, was that I'd secured both mikeroger@gmail.com and mike.roger@gmail.com and could switch between the two as I wanted. Obviously, this is incorrect.
The bright side is I seem to have blown the original email user away w/volume; he used to receive about 1 email every 3 days as opposed to my 20-30 (not including spam).
The down-side is he subscribed to XM ENTERTAINMENT's porn newsletter.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
does this mean that anyone who creates a gmail account that is essentially the same as mine, save for a period placed somewhere in the username would be able to read my mail?
*panicks*
Just create an account with dots in with the same letters as the account you want to spy on and you will get all their email.
There is an update at the top of the article:
Update: Ryan Coleman has since admitted he was mistaken, and that the e-mails he received addressed to ryancolemand@gmail.com were misaddressed.
I wonder how many slashdot accounts, internet domains, and amazon accounts are linked via an @gmail.com address.
This is most certainly not a "little" problem by any means...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
This has been known for a while in the user community. In fact, this tutorial is 18 months old, and demonstrates the "feature".
I have a friend from college that I met through a mistakenly delivered email. She was trying to send to someone with the email address like "rjm987@someotherschool.edu", but she accidentally put a space between the "m" and the "9", so the system delived it to one of my class accounts with the username "rjm". We became good friends and still email each other now and then, a decade later.
So, it can be a great way to meet new people!
I don't see the problem with that, I thought it was common knowledge. The way I see it, how often is a period essential, or dangerous? I don't think there are many domains with say, joesmith@domain.com and joe.smith@domain.com pointing to different people. I see the period as a way of reducing typing errors.
Also, you can do things like this:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answI don't want to sound trollish, but this hardly sounds like story material to me.
njord
The CB App. What's your 20?
Please stop posting my email address on Slashdot. Think of all the evil spammers!
Thanks,
A.C.
This has been the case since day 1. The only problem is if Google has been allowing people to register addresses that differ only because of the position of periods. Certainly they generally don't - I've tried to register several variations of my gmail address without success. It looks like the case discussed in this article is a isolated incident.
The person made a mistake. He was getting someone elses mail for a different reason. You cannot make two account that are the same.
- found-in-my-inbox-odd.html
Here is his blog post saying he made the mistake.
http://fitrans.blogspot.com/2006/01/oops-formerly
Never Smoke A Banana.
Uhm... I just tried this. It doesn't work - you can't register username if user.name is taken, nor can you register user.name if username is taken.
Come on. GMail is a public beta. I fully understand that this is a stupid bug but then again, who is using gmail to send critical mail? I must say that this somehow makes me feel ok for my first mailserver that treated Upper and lowercase adresses different. It took my a few days to find the proper setting in Cyrus.
It's kinda embarassing for a company like Google but still, that's what betas are for.
they turned evil! It had to happen!
Just the other day, I was overjoyed that Google was fighting for my rights, now I'm dissapointed to learn that they're not fighting for women's rights too.
I can only imagine what Condoleezza Rice & Hillary Clinton will have to say about this.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I've been wondering why I've been getting mail for some guy in Australia with the same name, yet when I looked at the To: line, it has a dot in the username.
This explains why I've been getting email from some guy telling me I'm his lab partner in some class and that I need to contact him to get info on the final assignment. I wrote to him, "Who do you think I am and what class are you talking about?". He says, "I'm Quincy. I set next to you in IST 326. We have an assignment due soon!" I say, "Uh. I don't think so, since I'm not in any IST program. Are you sure you have the right email?" The guy: "Yes, daviddunlap@gmail.com, right?" Me: "No, not at all. david.dunlap@gmail.com." I thought all this time that the guy just didn't know how to use email. Boy, was I wrong.
Not much better place to embarrass yourself than on the front page of /. ... :)
you had me at #!
Headline here should be corrected; this isn't a huge gmail flaw; seasoned users know it as a feature.
Secret gmail feature #1: you can add and remove periods from your username with no change in mail routing. There is no collision with other accounts since only one account (stripped of periods) is allowed to exist.
Scret gmail feature #2: you can append a plus and any string to your account name and it will still be routed to you. Try creating filters by giving out your address this way: eg example+spam@gmail.com will be delivered to username 'example'
This is absolutely not mis-delivery or a mistake on Google's part!
e r=10313&query=dot&topic=0&type=f
See Gmail's Help page on this at:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answ
(You may need to be logged into Gmail account to see this.)
Simply put, the period only matters when logging in. Gmail considers some.user@gmail.com and somuser@gmail.com as the same when delivering email, but if the account was oopened as some.user, then you have to use some.user as the login--someuser will not work. Send an email to some.user@gmail.com, somuser@gmail.com, or so.me.us.er@gmail.com, and it'll get delivered to the same account, but you will only be able to login as some.user@gmail.com
Google's intent was to cut down on addressing mistakes as well as spam.
From the user's perspective, actually a good thing because it means that you "lock in" similar addresses so some.user and someuser aren't two different accounts. It also means that the actual number of accounts is less because of this.
-Jim
http://gmailtips.com/
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
You get mail? I've signed up for tons of stuff and nobody sends anything to my $sys$@gmail.com account.
For the life of me, I can't figure out why.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I read your Email.
What I said above is a complete and total lie. Instead of going by what other slashdot posters had posted (lies as well, apparently - who would've guessed?), I actually tried it out and it didn't work. The grandparent was correct. I couldn't register firstnamelastname@gmail.com when firstname.lastname@gmail.com was already registered.
:)
I guess I should actually put a little effort in research before spouting unsubstantiated bullshit. Or I can just take note from the editors of a certain tech-oriented website and continue on my merry, non-reaserching way
good to see moderators are as lazy as I am
It used to be possible to register both a no-dot and a dot name as two separate accounts, and the mail did mingle. Now it is no longer possible to register both (but mail going to a dot name will go to the no-dot name).
For example, can I create g.oogle@gmail.com and get a copy of all email sent to google@gmail.com?
We've known about this since Gmail started. It's actually a VERY USEFUL FEATURE. I don't believe that there is any mis-delivery going on, because from memory you can't register cmdr.taco@gmail.com if cmdrtaco@gmail.com has already been used. So no one is going to be reading your mail.
Someone must have a version of my G-Mail account with a period in it. Apparently, they're very into penis enlargement...
Well, I suppose this is what "BETA" in Gmail logo stands for. Good thing all current Gmail users are hence beta-testers, otherwise they would've had a serious reason to complain.
This is news? I've known about this since I've been using G Mail It's a feature not a bug. If my email addy was johnsmith@gmail.com I could give everyone the address john.smith@gmail.com and I'd still get it. It also cuts down on imposters someone cannot register your name with just a period added, and trick people into thinking they're you.
Are you sure the other mike roger isn't just an idiot and thinks it's his but it's not?
I've had a yahoo mail address since they began giving them out, so it's my first initial, last name @ yahoo.com.
Somehow over the years no less than 20 people have decided it's their email address and subscribed it to lists, used it to order products, etc. I think they asked for it, and said "flast@yahoo.com is unavailable, how about flast543@yahoo.com" and they said yes, but continued to use flast@yahoo.com.
It's amazing, I get people's CC #'s mailed to me, their logins to secure shopping sites, etc.
Sean Penn Demands To Know What Asshole Took SeanPenn@gmail.com
Remember kids, with great power comes great opportunity to abuse that power
Oh well - if someone has the other one, they are getting a LOT of email (I'm on a lot of listservs)
This space available.
It is a G spot.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
All this week I have been receiving mail from a nice young lady in Naples about rental accomodation there. This wasnt spam, not in the slightest, it was most definately proper email about a rental enquiry made to her.
So after I got a few, I emailed her back and informed her I had no idea who she was, what these rentals were for and where did she get my information.
It turns out that she IS talking to another 'Richard Price', who had given her this email address and she was most confused. She was talking to this guy via his cell phone, had sent to and received physical mail from a mailing address fine but all his emails were coming to me.
I wonder if this was why.
As usual, Slashdot demonstrates its commitment to quality "journalism" by believing anything someone submits without doing basic checking.
This is a feature, not a bug (Really!). Furthermore, there will be no collisions. If you have gmail address, with or without periods, any variations on that with more or less periods cannot be registered and all email will be delivered to you regardless.
This is a non-story and a pathetic one at that.
Slashdot owes Google an apology.
Maybe it's just me but the regular, good ol' Google web search engine seems to be getting a little punchy lately. There are at least a dozen searches a day that return useless hits or links to cache pages that return an error when clicked on. Not surprising that they are making other mistakes as well.
Crap. One of my gmail accounts is american.communist.party@gmail.com.
Remove this story, as it's total b.s. BTW it was posted on digg 3 days ago, by which time it had been identified as b.s. Way to go slashdot!
The story has been recanted already in the link posted and the kid's blog where he first posted it, but people haven't caught on yet: there is just about no way for someone to get your mail. Don't worry. If you don't believe it, register lkfgsjadjskfjsdfgkljhkfjhgakfhg and lkfgsjadj.skfjsdfgkljhkfjhgakfhg and see that both can't exist. It actually is a cool FEATURE, no insecurity present.
Imagine you need to give your gmail address to your favourite insurance salesman. Your address is AnonymousCowardAtSlashdot@gmail.com
You give him address
Anonymous.CowardAtSlashdot@gmail.com
All mail gets delivered into your mailbox.
When you find out your mailbox is being abused by said salesman, you just filter out all mails addressed to Anonymous.CowardAtSlashdot
Cool. Isnt't it?
I just sent myself a test email without my usual period between my first and last names, and it never arrived back.
This space available.
I had gotten a few strange non-spam emails on one of my gmail accounts, and basically wrote back to the person explaining that I'm not who they thought I was.
But now that I look back on those emails, I notice that they were addressed to firstname.lastname@gmail.com, while my address is firstnamelastname@gmail.com.
Doh.
Despite we've needed this for a while, this article highlights the fact we need it.
We need a 'Blatant Lier'
The article was completely bogus, and look at all the responses backing it up. Liers.
BTW- interesting that the security word image I needed to type to post this comment was 'pretend'.
I don't know what this story is talking about, but the dot-ignoring delivery has been publicly known from day 1, and I just conducted the experiment of attempting to register a whole bunch of stupidly dotted variations on my username, and Gmail wouldn't let me register them.
So apparently they're doing the smart thing, and not including the dots when they do a uniqueness test on new usernames.
Maybe once upon a time in the very beginning they didn't, but I don't think that's the case now.
When I signed up, my full name without a period was unavailable...so I used the first.last form. I just went back and sent an email to the address without a period and I received it.
Wow...that was the most I've freaked out in a while - glad it turned out to be nothing. We're safe!
Reading about this makes me really glad I don't have the gmail account: experts.exchange.gmail.com
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
When gmail first opened I registered the address blah@gmail.com About a year later, I started to receive all these strange e-mails that were obviously not addressed to me. I come to find out that someone had registered the address bla.h@gmail.com. They would send out e-mails to folks, and when they responded the e-mail went to my account and not to bla.h's account. I've also heard that Gmail's developers had the bright idea of trying to eliminate the concept of "bounced" mail. They believed they could build a system that could accurately guess, based on algarithums and patterns, the address the e-mail was intended to if a person typed in the wrong address. I think they have actually played around with this a bit... for a while I could send an e-mail to blahz@gmail.com or blahs@gmail and it would "guess" that the e-mail was actually meant for blah@gmail.com. It was guessing what the real intended address was to auto-deliver e-mail's with typos. A kind of "Did You Mean?" feature for e-mail. In my humble opinion, Google needs to fix these problems if they want their e-mail service to be taken serious.
For anyone who wants to mail me, my mail address is not 2x5y)hp1 at all, but it could have been. Follow the url to my home page instead.
Google doesn't make many mistakes but when it does, boy, are they doozies
I'm not American and I'm not sure I understand. What is a "doozy" and should I be worried if I have one? I'm hoping it isn't the kind of thing I can catch just from using the internet.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Who finds a whole ton of duplicate stories between digg and slashdot now? It's almost like I could get any story I wanted published on slashdot - just rip off a story from digg.
I'm slightly dissappointed that slashdot is becoming a digg aggregator...
Google *very responsibly* referes to a great deal of their software as Beta. Because it is still in Beta. You can read more about the concept of Beta *testing* at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_stage - again, Google, unlike most software companies, takes this concept seriously.
... is tested through a limited roll-out to a production environment using live data and real users. The beta test is closely monitored by the software testers."
From Wiki: "beta build
It's right on the GMail logo. http://mail.google.com/mail/help/images/logo.gif They take the concept of Beta very seriously. How many Beta products has M$ released and charged out out the nose for it? *all of em*.
Horns are really just a broken halo.
Such as sending to (substitute user.name with my real e-mail address, of course) user.name@gmail.com, u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com, u.s.e..r.na.m.e@gmail.com, and username@gmail.com, when my real e-mail address was user.name@gmail.com. None of them worked except for user.name@gmail.com. So it seems like any e-mail other than the exact login name will not get forwarded to you. Of course, this could also be an exception case if there are more than one login name whose non-period versions map to the same name (for example, maybe before google patched their registration process, someone already registered username@gmail.com, as I never tried username@gmail.com to begin with, so I wouldn't know if that's been taken).
Uh, as long as I've had Gmail (a few months since it came out), I have known about this, and it was said to be a FEATURE. You want to know how? Well, I created a filter that sends all email TO: firstlast@gmail.com to a spam label, and this way only people who email first.last@gmail.com (notice the period) will go to my inbox. It's a feature, much like the firstlast+tag@gmail.com. Some sites don't accept the +tag part though. So, in other words, sign up to websites that may spam you by using firstlast@gmail.com and it will be filtered to a spam label (if you set it up that way) but tell your friends your address is first.last@gmail.com. You could also do it vice-versa. Accept email only as firstlast@gmail.com but if an address has first.last@gmail.com, it is then marked as spam. If they "fix" this, I will be quite upset. I've been using it extensively. -Ares
Why is this article being left on the front page? It has been seen to be completely invalid, and is giving people the wrong idea. Great, you put a correction up, but the correction negates everything the article contains. Get rid of it.
But when they do, it's a doozy!
... and then they built the supercollider.
> The '.' character in an email address violates RFC,
> but no one seems to really care.
Nobody cares, probably because it doesn't violate the RFC.
Don't put it as first or last character and rfc2822 is your friend.
[...]
Some of the structured header field bodies also allow the period
character (".", ASCII value 46) within runs of atext. An additional
"dot-atom" token is defined for those purposes.
[...]
What is this "Slashdot" you speak of? We only see a site called "Slash"
... and then they built the supercollider.
This is old news. I reported this to Google/Gmail back in August/2005. Here is a screen capture from the forum where I posted about this issue. http://putfile.com.nyud.net:8090/pic.php?pic=1/211 5353137.jpg&s=x4
Orginal post:
http://www.thecomputermechanics.com/forums/showthr ead.php?t=2334
Anything sent to my email address with dots added NEVER gets to me.
My wife too. We both have very early gmail accounts (within the first month or so). Back in the early days, were different people allowed to sign up for different dot-variation names? If so, the obvious fix would have been to remove the dot functionality on those combinations to avoid having email sent to the wrong accounts. Which may be what happened with our accounts. That would suck if true, as missing this functionality is a big loss.
Isn't a bug like this, a major security risk for people who have online accounts linked to their gmail? Could a person request that anomynous coward's password be email to anonymouscoward@gmail.com account and pick it at anonymous.coward@gmail.com.
ya know?
Yes, you are correct. This whole thing must be a mistake. They even point this out on the sign up page.
All of the brightest boys, To play with the biggest toys - More than they bargained for...
As may users have pointed out Ars has since corrected the story, stating that the original submitter was mistaken and the email was just improperly addressed.
That's what happens when you take "news" from some dumbass' blog.
I receive email addressed to mikerobert@gmail.com as well as email correctly addressed to mike.robert@gmail.com.
For obvious reasons, I'm unsure if he receives my e-mail.
And as a final P.S., I used e.g. correctly, as my name is neither Mike nor Robert. (It's Speedy Gonzales)
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I may be a filthy liar, but it ain't for this post. You should read my status reports. Then you'll know filthy lying.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
One can only wish Windows security problems could be solved this easily.
My austin.taylor address gets emails on occasion that have nothing to do with me, and that are addressed to austintaylor@gmail. I do believe it's a bug.
I experienced this first-hand. I was surprised to see a registration confirmation in my inbox for Lavalife when I have never even been to the site and already have a girlfriend. Awkward, to say the least. It let me log on to his acccount information, and it turns out he's a married guy in Australia looking for a little "fun" on the side. If I were as sneaky as him, he'd be in the doghouse for a few months...
Google Makes Plenty of Mikstakes
Oh, the irony...
--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95
I have x.lastname@gmail.com. I routinely get email for xlastname@gmail.com, it evens says so in the email (which leads me to believe it's not a misspell on the part of the sender).
Here's a sample from the top of the email, which I assume reflects what the sender entered as the email address:
BroadbandCompany Support broadbandcompany@support.broadbandcompany.net - to xlastname
It then goes on to tell me important information about the person's account, including the password and a link to view more account information. I have recieved password retrieval emails, etc in the past as well for various other sites. It happens often enough that I doubt it's a human mistake. But I could be wrong.
Oh, I can log in as x.lastname@gmail.com but not xlastname@gmail.com, I just checked, so I have no idea what is up with this "feature".
x
So very true. In fact, this is the real reason why spammers do what they do - send out as much mails to as much people they can reach, in the hope to find that one true person in their life.
They even offer rewards in their emails! Such good people...
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
This is insane. I've been using GMail for over a year, but the idea that some of my emails might have been redirected to someone else just so pisses me off. Fuck you Google, and this is from the bottom of a geek heart. It will hurt. I am not going to try or recommend ANY Google product from now on. Take your shit and go home.
you are not from around here, are you? how dare you retract your statement. it's Un-Everything (TM). i don't mean that as a cynical/satarical compliment. i literally mean what i said. largely on the off chance that your post may set a precedent and the rest of us actually have to follow in your Un-Everything (TM) ways of having to stand accountable.
naah, who am i kidding.
A lot of people are saying this isnt an issue, but it sounds as if several people here are saying they DO get email intended for others. Does that suggest that at one point (or even now?) Google let people sign up both john.smith@ and johnsmith@ as different accounts?
On a slightly related note, did anyone notice that Monday or Tuesday morning (EST) the "Gmail" in the logo changed to "Google Mail"?
Apparently this is what Gmail is called in the UK, for one reason or another, but I've never seen it in the US.
Stole my wife's Cosmo. Always thought Google's G naming thing was a bit risky.
G. spot
G. string
G. Gordon Liddy http://www.liddyshow.us/ Etc
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
"I've signed up for tons of stuff and nobody sends anything to my $sys$@gmail.com account."
At the risk of sounding like a total dumb ass, what does $sys$ mean?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Update: As may users have pointed out Ars has since corrected the story, stating that the original submitter was mistaken and the email was just improperly addressed.
hahahahahahhahhahah oh man. i think i peed.
I just did some basic tests on GMail...my observations:
- If someone registers john.smith@gmail.com*, then johnsmith@gmail.com becomes immediately unavailable.
- mail sent to johnsmith@gmail.com would get delivered to john.smith@gmail.com. Sometime it shows up in the Inbox, while at other times it will show up in "All Mail"
- this is consistent with the Google policy that dot is ignored.
- Why have some people then received email intended for others ? This is a very serious question, and I hope we can get some answers on it before we trust Google again.
NOTE (*) - I used a weird combination of letters instead of plain johnsmith.
For those of you who are trying to "test" this by e-mailing yourself: That may not work.
GMail attempts to remove duplicate e-mails in your mail box. This is very useful, for instance, with mailing lists: You don't want to receive a copy of the e-mail you sent, since GMail is already smart enough to aggregate the sent copy with the rest of the "conversation". Also, when people use "reply-all" to reply to both you and to the mailing list, you probably would rather not receive two copies of the reply, so again, GMail removes the duplicate.
As a result of all this, if you e-mail yourself, GMail will treat it as a duplicate and toss it, so you'll only see the e-mail in your sent mail. I think they made a specific hack that tries to check for mail sent to yourself to put it in your inbox too, but there are lots of ways to make it not work. Long story.
Also, if you address an e-mail to both ab@gmail.com and a.b@gmail.com, ab will only get one copy of the e-mail since the second will be removed as a dupe.
mole.station@gmail.com
You're new around here, aren't you...
you had me at #!
deja vu ...... yeah I remember people raving about this when gmail first came about......
I noticed I was getting emails that were addressed to someone with just the first 3 letters of my address.
Am no fek Buddhist, but this is enlightenment.
I've signed up for tons of stuff and nobody sends anything to my $sys$@gmail.com account."
> At the risk of sounding like a total dumb ass, what does $sys$ mean?
$sys$ was used by the Sony rootkit to hide files.
European Linux user, living in Antwerp
I hate to point this out to you, but you need a username before the "@" symbol. That could be why no one is sending anything. Hope this helps.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, however, there is.
I am a "non-period username" gmail account holder (not the one I post to Slashdot with). As of 1/17, I am still receiving e-mail for the addressee who has the period in his address. It's nice... He's a real estate agent who communicates with his clients via e-mail. I'm sure they don't mind me reading all of their financial statements. Google may have fixed the initial account creation issue, but there is still an issue with delivery to previously created accounts. I have been doing what I think is the nice thing, and replying to the senders whose mail I mistakenly receive. I copy and paste the Google explanation, and further explain that I am not the intended recipient. This is an issue. I understand that Google is BETA, but I will only use that account for trivial stuff from here on out. I will never trust it beyond that. Hmmm.... Maybe I'll start posting to Slashdot with it. Can't get much more trivial than that. ;-)
Steve
I seriously doubt someone just now realized they were getting someone elses mail for the past year...
Can't believe slashd.. oh wait, yes i can, nevermind.
i have a period in my gmail account (between my first and last name). occasionally i recieve email addressed to a user account that is the same as mine without the period. it is not a regular occurance but sometimes its mail from his family and other times its mail from his employer!
[...]Microsoft aren't capable of rolling out their own patches quickly enough[...]
Firstly, the grammar nazi in me will let this one slide. Anyone who finds what I'm so tempted to complain about get a cookie.
Secondly, Microsoft patches take a while to roll out because of testing. The patches must work perfectly and they must work perfectly on all systems. Open source fixes, although faster, don't have to go through as rigorous of testing, and should a patch cause further problems, there is no liability for lost profits and the like.
I doubt they would be able to move as quickly as google in the event of a real vulnerability.
Patching an e-mail system to avoid overlooking periods (the little dot at the end of sentences, sheesh) is a lot simpler than fixing the abuse of an originally innocuous function created over a decade ago in an obsolete image format. Google works with a rather nifty database program; Microsoft works with million-line operating systems under constant attack by every hacker on the internet.
So, yea, Google could probably get a patch off faster - the difference is between the misdelivery of e-mail and the crashing of the internet. (Slammer, anyone?)
DATABASE WOW WOW
We did confirm it, or so we thought we did. The e-mail delivery problem is there, if you choose to call it a problem. Mail sent to JoeSixpack will arrive at Joe.Sixpack, provided that those two GAs are not 2004-era accounts registered to different people. Some people think it's a feature, some don't.
As for the accounts mix-up, it looks as though it matters when you registered your account. As you can see from the /. discussion, a number of people ran in to GA accounts when
the service was still young. Now it won't let you register accounts with only a "." as a differentiator. It appears Google has fixed that aspect, but they are still delivering e-mail with the periods stipped out, which is how this was noticed in the first place.
This has been the case ever since GMail was launched. The "pick a username" page when it first started even said so explicitly, saying that "jsmith@gmail.com" was the same as "j.smith@gmail.com"!
"Google doesn't make many mistakes..."
;)
Well, see what Google suggests ("Did you mean...?") when you search on "landlords required to give heat"
I am not a number - I am a free man!
I sent myself a few emails from another account. My gmail account doesn't include any periods in the username, as you may see in the spam-filtered version in this message header: the username is a single word. I sent a few test messages, throwing a period into some random spot in the name, and all test messages reached me. So that part's certainly broken. However, as some have pointed out, that's potentially a feature not a bug, as I was able to see on the receiving end, which period permutation the message had been addressed to. This is useful for figuring out who gave your email address to a spammer. Just throw in a few periods when you're signing up somewhere, note down the particular combo you used, and when/if you start getting new spam, you'll be able to see if it came out of the particular variation you used on that site. I just might use that 'bug' intentionally at some point and I actually hope they don't fix it, so that it will work when I expect it to.
Over the past 2 weeks I've been getting email for someone else. I don't have a '.' but I guess the other guy does. So either all his family are idiots, he sent them the wrong address (mine) or this is a true story after all.
>>If you're thinking that Microsoft is singular, requiring isn't instead of aren't, you might be wrong.
If he is thinking that, he is wrong. A group of people (plural) can be idetified with a name, and still can be addressed as 'more than one'.
>>The correct form depends on where you live.
Nope. This usage is universal(!) in US English as well as English English.
Mod this up. Made me laugh aloud! =)
scuttlemonkey for teh lose.
OH GOD! if only I still had a mod point, its the thought that counts right?
---
BTW who would like to throw a fellow slashdotter a gmail invitation.? I tried today getting one with the sms phone thingy but never got the invitation message.
Got Code?
Try this simple test and you will understand the bug Send email to yourself by replacing username below with your email username and see how many emails you get in your INBox. You will find that some emails do get deliver but some don't. if Gmail ignores dot in the username then why don't you get all the following emails sent to your Inbox? THIS IS DEFINETELY A BUG 1. username@gmail.com 2. user.name@gmail.com 3. u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com 4. us.er.na.me@gmail.com 5. use.rna.me@gmail.com
I got the friend to forward me the misdirected message and -- sure enough -- the customer had forwarded the bill to her friend as part of a test message.
This news only got the irate customer more irate. She accused me of incompetence, and lying to her and all sorts of other things. She still wanted a refund.
In the end, I told her I was passing her back to a Customer Support supervisor (I was a senior analyst, not a Customer Support geek, but I helped the second tier CS geeks with the serious problems).
She wanted me to say that it had been a pleasure dealing with her. I declined.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Doesnt this also mean that you could create an account of a friend email alias with some random period in there, and boom you get all of there email or what.
Gmail requires 6 characters before the @-symbol, so that's a lie.
The idea is nice however, I've been thinking about it for a while:
Most people nowadays prefix their email address with "SPAM". They consider it safer because spambots aren't that smart. Now, spambots auto-delete "spam" when it's in an email address.
So, what if you registered dascandyspam@gmail.com (for me) as normal email addy with dascandy@gmail.com as spam address?
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
That's gonna leave a mark. I can't wait to see the replay on ESPN.
Wow, that explains why since I registered my Gmail account I could follow another guys life about his move to Norway, confirmation on his DSL line, his parents visiting him and that there were no new CPR courses until 2006.
But hey, Gmail still carries the BETA tag.
Holy PEBKAC, Batman!
Everyone in gmail knows this. They said so themselves back when it started 2 years ago
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
I don't get it.
My gmail address is first.last@gmail.com. I can only assume that someone else has registered firstlast@gmail.com because if I send an email to that account it never gets to me.
I tried logging into Gmail with firstlast@ and my password but it was invalid.
Surely this can only mean that someone else has access to it. I'm now concerned that mistyped emails will find thier way to my period-less doppleganger.
Anyone else got a similar experience?
I always wished that *@*.* would work. :(
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
... why I've gotten those emails intended for Jessica Radaelli (jes.rad) in my GMail account (jesrad).
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I was wondering where my spam was coming from.... Turns out it's all from firstlast@gmail.com when I only own first.last@gmail.com. Puh-lease. I could deal without a delete button, but this is stupid.
This is not necessarly true. I have an account f.myname@gmail.com and because someone registered fmyname@gmail.com (which appens to be a guy from my family) and i don't recieve his email and he dosent receives mine. Somehow the server must recognize this as different accounts so the fuzzy match only takes place if the names is not associated with some account first. And yes, our address where registered almost on the beginning of Gmail ...
...has login credentials emailed to a web-based email account?!?!
This is such old news. Myself and co-workers had discovered this months ago on accident. I'm suprised how long it took others to finally speak up about it.
Google stated that periods would be ignored when you first created your username, way back in beta testing days...
Can you log in to your Gmail account using username with dots added/removed?
Another delivery bug in gmail. My gmail account address is ogotai@gmail.com. Yesterday a received a message destined to hogota@gmail.com...
X-Gmail-Received: f04f4ab75270aa01a00783765ea527a82d46ea0b Delivered-To: ogotai@gmail.com Received: by 10.65.213.8 with SMTP id p8cs51050qbq; Sun, 22 Jan 2006 03:41:31 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.36.81.7 with SMTP id e7mr2902403nzb; Sun, 22 Jan 2006 03:41:31 -0800 (PST) Return-Path: Received: from 72C5F94 ([58.35.64.158]) by mx.gmail.com with SMTP id 19si4073559nzp.2006.01.22.03.41.08; Sun, 22 Jan 2006 03:41:31 -0800 (PST) Received-SPF: neutral (gmail.com: 58.35.64.158 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of Timmons1Hollingsworth@masterhelicopteros.com.br) Message-ID: From: "Willard H. Vann" Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 06:39:26 -0500 Sender: Timmons1Hollingsworth@masterhelicopteros.com.br To: hogota@gmail.com X-Responder-ID: 03 Subject: U free tomorrow Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;
Why.... thanks. d:-b ruce
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
d:-b ruce
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy