Slashdot Mirror
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.
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)
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 . .
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.
This has been known for a while in the user community. In fact, this tutorial is 18 months old, and demonstrates the "feature".
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 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.
Gmail already has this feature if you own slashdot@gmail.com you can also use slashdot+anything@gmail.com
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
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!
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
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.
There is no word for a fix, because there is no problem. The story is utter bunk, and has been updated to show that.
As for Microsoft rolling out a third party patch - yeah right - Microsoft aren't capable of rolling out their own patches quickly enough - I doubt they would be able to move as quickly as google in the event of a real vulnerability.
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!
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.
I tried it first as one message to two recipients, and it didn't work either.
Try sending it from an email account other that your gmail account, and don't send to both addresses from the same message (i.e. two recipients.) I send one message from my university account to first.last@gmail.com then a second separate message to firstlast@gmail.com and both arrived.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
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
er, no. Only that if you want to begin or end the local part with a ".", then you have to quote the local part. i.e. some.body@domain.example is fine, but .somebody@domain.example must be stated as ".somebody"@domain.example
RFC 2822, 3.4.1 "Addr-spec specification" (italics mine):
Congratulations on being mostly correct. Now if you could just spell it right when you pass along the name: Duesenberg.
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.