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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.
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.
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'
Yep, but some experimenting also revealed that the google help entry seems incorrect : when dropping the period from my username, the mail did not arrive in the mailbox of my account that contains the period.
:/
Kinda makes me wonder if someone else now received my test mails
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).
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.
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.
No, look at this blog post about the issue. It's from a while ago, and describes the behavior people are discussing. It's not a recent fix, it's been this way all along! (In other words, the "controversy" here is completely bogus.)
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.
I get plenty of spam to the subaddresses (like "jon-nospam@jrock.us"). I've never gotten any SPAM in my main mailbox, though, so I don't think anyone's doing this yet. I have seen a few people send SPAM to "jon-@jrock.us" or "nospam@jrock.us", but that's fine since those aliases have no legitimate use. I auto-blacklist any senders to those addresses, as well as auto-reporting the SPAM to spamcop. Seems to be working fairly well.
My other car is first.
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?