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Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

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Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#91

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…

Or, contact the legitimate recipient, and tell them to sue the bank.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#92

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.

And most email scrapers / aggregators these days also ignore the + and whatever comes after.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I like that idea. I use Fastmail, in fact. So I could use hn@yourdomain.com or any address specific to a service.

I guess the risk would be potentially not remembering that was done or exactly what was used. Also, could keep you locked into Fastmail or limited to providers who have this same feature.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#97

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've purchased a truck in Florida, been going to college in (I forget which state) for a few years now, opened an LLC AND filed for divorce with Legal zoom, was part of a venture partnership with multiple personal invite and discussion emails about investment meetings, and more! I've responded many times to these and the only replies are from the last one, and Legal zoom (who told me sorry, disregard it??)

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#98

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…

Or, contact the legitimate recipient, and tell them to sue the bank.

It’s very rare to have any other contact information for these people. It’s not like you can email them. :)

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#99
post #68
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reset their account passwords.

I’d rather not commit a federal computer crime thanks

They provided false credentials. The account is yours.

I did this once when someone created a Facebook account using my address. I let it go for a year and then did a password reset and deletion. At the time there was no requirement for email verification so the account was fully functional. Again, this is Facebook's responsibility to verify new accounts. A confirmation email link is last century's technology.

Moreover, what happens if this doppelganger is committing crimes via said account and investigators track you down from the email. It is in your best interest to eliminate these accounts. Kindly explaining the situation to non-existent customer support will get you nowhere.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#100
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

James is wrong, this is Netflix's fault. The same "scam" would work under a variety of circumstances because Netflix relies on something it has no reason to believe is true. Maybe you signed up to Netflix but your house mate thinks she did, she gets an email because of Eve, now you're both paying for Netflix, but actually she's paying for Eve's account. Netflix could make this mistake with postal addresses even, if f…

This is actually Google's fault. Because Google is large enough Netflix could be nice and have special handling for Gmail addresses but this would be going against the email RFC that says $inbox1+$subaddr@domain == $inbox2+$subaddr@domain iff $inbox1 and $inbox2 are identical . Netflix has zero idea how any particular email operator mangles or maps inboxes to actual users. Apple's private email service maps all sorts…

This is Netflix's fault for not verifying email addresses before taking payment details for a recurring subscription.
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