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Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

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Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#81

Post by Spivak »

teddyh wrote: post #22
roel_v wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's part of the RFC email address spec. Ignoring .'s isn't, AFAIR.

Nope, the + trick is not standardized. The RFCs only specify that everything before the @ character is specific to the recipient system and Should Not Be Messed With ; even case-folding that part of an e-mail address is a no-no, since the recipient system might distinguish case, and the sender has no way of knowing. The + trick arose later, as a feature of certain mail recipient programs like Sendmail and Postfix, an…

Subaddressing or "plus addressing" is a standard defined in RFC5223.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#82

Post by richard_g »

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…

What's strange to me is why they thought that email address would work -- after all it's not their address. I've got years of emails from France for the same reason.

You can set up a filter for the incorrect version of your email address (any email to namenodot@gmail.com) and get those out of your inbox.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#83

Post by liquidgecka »

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…

Been there. I posted about this before but I own a 5 character common first and last name @gmail.com address. I get misdirected emails _constantly_.

Usually I am polite about it and let people know, but sometimes I make a game of it. I was invited to participate in a drum circle with an offer to pay for my flight to which I replied that I would love to join, but they would also have to pay for drum lessons. I got a mother insisting that I come home for the weekend to which I replied that I am home, perhaps she hadn't knocked hard enough.. etc.

At one point I got like 15 emails deriding me and my choice to "not support firefighters". Turns out that a member of a city council had listed his email as councilman.@gmail.com and most people just ignored everything before that period. I took it as a challenge to see what the most outlandish thing I could say was that would be believed. Some of the better attempts: "My wife had an affair with a firefighter once!" and "My house has never burned down, why do we even need these guys?".. etc.

With most of the financial emails you can unsubscribe at least. =/

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#85

Post by liquidgecka »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #33
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…

There's an xkcd for everything. Sure, that's probably my email address. https://xkcd.com/1279/

Annoyingly that is different, everything after the + is _ignored_ so only one person can have +@gmail.com. Other people I am guessing use first.lastname and that is where the confusion is. =)

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#87

Post by justusthane »

shanecleveland wrote: post #57
dhritzkiv wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The level-up for this trick is if you have your own domain, and a provider that lets you use a wildcard alias (Fastmail, for one), you can use anything@yourdomain.com. On the fly. No way to block that!

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#88

Post by bluehatbrit »

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 the same but it seems to be one specific person in Canada (I'm in the UK). I started getting emails about college prospectuses and applications, then I started getting them about library fines. I tried to email the library and inform them that they had the wrong email address and got nothing back. The latest has been emails from a car dealership trying to confirm some options for a new car.

I can't believe this person is missing so many emails that are presumably quite important to them. I can only assume they have the same first name as me but spelt differently and that other people are typing their address in wrong to various systems.

These days I just ignore every email like that, mostly for fear that one day I'll end up stuck with someone trying to hold me responsible for something.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#89

Post by jeffbee »

judge2020 wrote: post #61
caseysoftware wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, providers/servers should ignore everything from the + to the @ so that should work just about everywhere else. And since most forms don't filter that out, you can make numerous "unique" addresses connected to a single one. Now odds are, someone is going to respond with the one service where the + becomes significant..

Been using this for a while - https://github.com/johno/normalize-email

That is a shamefully bad library. There's a million ways this is broken but the worst by far is that it lowercases the local part. Case MUST be preserved in the local part.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#90

Post by godelski »

justusthane wrote: post #80
LatteLazy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can filter your gmail based on the TO field (so anything without the dot goes to spam) if you like. I've done the same thing myself intentionally: I give the dot-less version to sites/companies where I need to receive an email or two (account confirmation etc). Then I manually grab them from spam and then forget the whole thing knowing I'll never see the other crap they send me. Hope that helps, as someone with a…

You can also append “+whatever” to the username part of your gmail address and filter it that way. E.g. johndoe+mailinglist@gmail.com Unfortunately some services won’t accept that as a valid address.

Others strip it too
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