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.

Comments

Not two accounts

[rritterson]

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.

It's a feature, not a bug (No, really)

[njord]

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?answe r=12096&topic=1564

I don't want to sound trollish, but this hardly sounds like story material to me.

njord

This is all wrong

[Lanzaa]

The person made a mistake. He was getting someone elses mail for a different reason. You cannot make two account that are the same.

Here is his blog post saying he made the mistake.
http://fitrans.blogspot.com/2006/01/oops-formerly- found-in-my-inbox-odd.html

Fixed?

[broothal]

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.

This is not news and not rocket science

[jbarr]

This is absolutely not mis-delivery or a mistake on Google's part!

See Gmail's Help page on this at:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answe r=10313&query=dot&topic=0&type=f

(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/

I am a liar.

[Vicsun]

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 :)