Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses • Hacker News Board

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#51

Post by AdmiralAsshat » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

RandomBacon wrote: post #48

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've encountered the same problem. One day I'm going to stop being polite and cancel the Hotel Reservations, Conference Invites, and other shit that this guy keeps signing up for using my email address. Maybe that will get him to finally pay attention.

I imagine then you've probably gotten receipts/confirmations with the person's phone number. Have you tried calling him and letting him know?

You'd think so, but nope! In addition to the fact that about half the emails are in Spanish (my doppelganger appears to be a Central American doctor?), all of them seem to contain the bare minimum of info that would allow me to actually contact the person in question. And, ya know, you'd think a hotel or a financial institution that is notified they have someone other than the actual customer's email on file would be quick to correct that, yet so far I have never received so much as an acknowledgement from anyone that they will correct their records and try to seek out the account holder by other means.

I've marked most of them as Spam at this point, so hopefully Gmail's filters are simply learning to automatically send anything in Spanish to my Spam folder.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#52

Post by giarc » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

ghastmaster wrote: post #5

This is indeed the case. I have checked it myself. The link below shows how this can be used maliciously. https://jameshfisher.com/2018/04/07/the-dots-do-matter-how-t... I do not know if this has been mitigated.

Wouldn't the real James be notified that someone used his email to sign up for another Netflix account? When 'Eve' signed up for Netflix with james.hfisher@gmail.comm the signup confirmation would go to jameshfisher@ inbox?

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#53

Post by shiftpgdn » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

RandomBacon wrote: post #48

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've encountered the same problem. One day I'm going to stop being polite and cancel the Hotel Reservations, Conference Invites, and other shit that this guy keeps signing up for using my email address. Maybe that will get him to finally pay attention.

I imagine then you've probably gotten receipts/confirmations with the person's phone number. Have you tried calling him and letting him know?

I have a common name, also a name used by a huge construction firm. I own firstnamelastname@gmail.com and firstnamelastname.com . There is no hope for these people. I have tried everything under the sun to get them to give out the correct email address.

What I HAVE noticed is that it's usually transcription error. These people that share my name are writing down their email with a pen and paper and a secretary or transcription service is inputting it incorrectly. Lately I reply back to hotel confirmations asking for a complimentary hotel upgrade with lots of extra soap in the room.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#54

Post by bitbang » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #6

I have been getting financial emails from several people for many years at my GMail ID. They apparently have given my address but without the dot. But what mystifies me is how these people keep going for years without ever realising they aren't getting account transaction emails (from their banks), notifications of stock trades, even OTP emails etc. How is it possible for people to use these services for years withou…

Same exact issue. Especially with people from Africa for some reason. I get a lot of stuff from 3 people from Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Most everything there is managed by phone, and they just use my email as a throw-away address. The guy in South Africa has a collections agency after him. The guy in Kenya likes to order food delivery quite a bit. I occasionally change his order to extra spicy. The guy in Zimbabwe works for a college of some sort. I make sure he's signed up for all the educational trips to Europe.

Also some senior woman in Oregon, who is a frequenter of "silver singles".

Some industrial supply company in Canada is very confused by the fake Groupon I sent them for the free stuff they are trying to bill me for.

Some guy in Australia has his security deposit box setup with my address, and is way overdue on some payments.

(I've tried multiple times to correct the wrong email address of the people I mess with, and have been ignored)

Lots of US political junk mail, from many localities, both parties. LOTS AND LOTS OF KINKY PORN SITES.

Fortunately none of them have the dot in the address and I have a filter to send them all directly to trash.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#55

Post by agency » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #6

I have been getting financial emails from several people for many years at my GMail ID. They apparently have given my address but without the dot. But what mystifies me is how these people keep going for years without ever realising they aren't getting account transaction emails (from their banks), notifications of stock trades, even OTP emails etc. How is it possible for people to use these services for years withou…

Same exact situation here. I have {commonFirstName}.{commonLastName}@gmail.com and get so much legit email without the dot for other people with my name. There’s at least a few of them - a retired vet, a substitute teacher in Ireland, a middle school student in Montana. And just this week I got some from a bail bond place for a kid in Texas that included his picture. I don’t understand how these people aren’t constantly confused about not getting emails they expect

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#56

Post by fbn79 » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

Good. So I can re-subscribe to the same tryout service again and again adding dots to my address without the need of use disposable mailbox (banned for sure) or create a new one time address.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#57

Post by shanecleveland » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 3:08 PM UTC

dhritzkiv wrote: post #27

chrisgd wrote: post #3

My email is firstlast I use first.last for subscriptions I am unsure I want to keep. I can then filter out based on to address and also use diff combinations when I already know I don’t want them contacting me (firs.tlast) for example

If you use the + character (e.g. `firstlast+subscriptions`) it'll still arrive to your `firstlast` inbox, but will allow you to filter it more meaningfully.

Some services recognize this and do not allow email "aliases." One reason is that it essentially would allow you to sign up for an endless number of trials with the same email account.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#58

Post by dave84 » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

I spent far too much of my time trying to explain this to Humanity.com’s support after someone created an account using a dotless variant of my email. I didn’t want to freeze the guy out of his account as I imagine he was using it for shift work notifications but in the end they just told me to change the password. Their support repeatedly insisted that gmail was broken and I should contact Google.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#59

Post by armoredkitten » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #6

I have been getting financial emails from several people for many years at my GMail ID. They apparently have given my address but without the dot. But what mystifies me is how these people keep going for years without ever realising they aren't getting account transaction emails (from their banks), notifications of stock trades, even OTP emails etc. How is it possible for people to use these services for years withou…

I get the same thing all the time. I think it's relatively common for people who signed up for Gmail early, and thus we able to get a bare named email (i.e., no numbers afterwards like john.doe420).

The weird thing for me is that it seems to be more than just a single person writing down the wrong email or using it for junk mail. I have gotten emails from places all over the US, a couple places in the UK, and in the past year or so from someone in France. And while some of it is junk mail, I've gotten emails about rental agreements, company emails, insurance policies...

I used to try to be nice and email people back and tell them they had the wrong person. Now I just delete them. It's not worth the time and effort. Unless it's a kind old lady sending an email to her grandson, it's getting deleted. Hopefully their insurance company or whoever will call them after not hearing a response. Unlike regular mail, there's no consistent "return to sender" function, so...deleted.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#60

Post by iamthemonster » Fri, Aug 28, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

Santosh83 wrote: post #6

I have been getting financial emails from several people for many years at my GMail ID. They apparently have given my address but without the dot. But what mystifies me is how these people keep going for years without ever realising they aren't getting account transaction emails (from their banks), notifications of stock trades, even OTP emails etc. How is it possible for people to use these services for years withou…

I have a fairly common first name and last name and I thought I was a genius when I jumped onto an early gmail invitation in (I think) early 2005 to bag my "firstname.lastname@gmail.com".

Now I realise I was a chump and should probably have just stuck with sexxiboi69@hotmail.com