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Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

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Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#251

Post by nicoburns »

kelnos wrote: post #231
amingilani wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually you start getting a bunch of spam. I feel most of mine originated from GitHub and data-leaks. Tip: configure a catch-all to your email address, and use custom email addresses for every website. I love having e.g. news.ycombinator.com@gilani.me and being able to filter out bad email addresses whenever they become tiresome. I've also configured Mailgun on the domain (not what it was intended for but ¯\_(ツ)_/…

I'm the only email address on my domain, and I haven't set up a catch-all. I use my actual email address to sign up for anything that requires a signup. I don't have a junk account, and I don't use +-aliases. I don't hide my address; it's listed on my website, in my HN profile, and likely in a bunch of random places on the web, unobfuscated. In general, I just don't worry about it. My GMail spam folder has around 10-…

> Likely they mostly have unsubscribe links; after a quick scroll down the list, I think it's nearly all from companies that I do have or had an existing relationship with.

At one point I decided to actually hit the unsubscribe links rather than just archiving these emails. Turns out I was subscribed to nearly 200 different mailing lists. But there were only 1 or 2 that wouldn't let me unsubscribe.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#252

Post by schwinn140 »

PREACH. This is hands-down the single largest reason why I abandoned my Gmail. I receive countless people's credit applications, loan details, new credit card details, bills, etc, credit collections, etc.

All because they have the same last name as me and opted to use a period in their email address.

This is happening across multiple countries as well. Sadly, none of these people ever receive their important messages because I gave up trying ages ago.

How they continue to explain this away as a feature is beyond me. Google is constantly pushing forward with various, and perhaps superficial, security/privacy oriented initiatives yet here's one of their core products offering up the most private details of others without zero care to fix it. SMH

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#253

Post by spullara »

robbyking wrote: post #172

A coworker of mine got an email once containing important scholarship information intended for a high school kid in Florida. He did a little looking online and found the kid's and his parent's actual email addresses and forwarded the email to them. So here's where it gets weird/dumb: the kid replies to my friend and his parents and says, "hey mom, you put the wrong email address on my application, there's no dot in m…

Happens to me all the time but not due to dots. People just don't know their own email addresses.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#254

Post by dotBen »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #166
dotBen wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They provided false credentials. The account is yours. IANAL but I don't think it works like that. Ownership is not the same as control.

Ownership was never established in the first place.

Sure it was. I create an account, accept the terms and condition and put in your email address, your phone number and your street address. It's still my account, I am the one that accepted the conditions (you would cry foul if you were bound by the conditions you didn't accept).

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#255

Post by compscistd »

schwinn140 wrote: post #252

PREACH. This is hands-down the single largest reason why I abandoned my Gmail. I receive countless people's credit applications, loan details, new credit card details, bills, etc, credit collections, etc. All because they have the same last name as me and opted to use a period in their email address. This is happening across multiple countries as well. Sadly, none of these people ever receive their important messages…

I don't know how this would happen under their policy.

> Adding dots doesn't change your address, so dots aren't why you got someone else's mail. Instead, the sender probably mistyped or forgot the correct address.

> For example, if someone meant to email john.43.smith@gmail.com but typed john.smith@gmail.com, the message went to you because you own johnsmith@gmail.com.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#256

Post by bityard »

sydd wrote: post #169
sriku wrote: post #150

Not only do dots not matter, you can suffix "+ " to your user name before the "@gmail.com" and it will still come to your email address. I actually love this "+" feature and use it a lot .. like send an email to "+bookmark@gmail.com" to bookmark a link, or register with "+nospam" and setup a filter for that address if anyone sends me email on that. This is supported by icloud and fastmail too.

Also a good check if the site has some sloppy implementation. More than once have I seen that my "+" email was not accepted because of invalid characters. I take this as a sign to not trust the site's security too.

This is not always accidental. Facebook, for example, does not allow a '+' in your email address and you cannot tell me that the engineers at Facebook don't know about the "+" in gmail addresses. The simplest explanation is that Facebook wants to make sure you are not signing up with an alias account. That is, they want your _real_ address, just like they insist on having your real name and other personal info.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#257

Post by stingraycharles »

schwinn140 wrote: post #252

PREACH. This is hands-down the single largest reason why I abandoned my Gmail. I receive countless people's credit applications, loan details, new credit card details, bills, etc, credit collections, etc. All because they have the same last name as me and opted to use a period in their email address. This is happening across multiple countries as well. Sadly, none of these people ever receive their important messages…

This type of stuff happens all the time. I’m actually receiving all kinds of internal information from a large insurance company from India, supposedly because one of their employees is registered with a typo in the domain name, which is my domain.

I can’t for the love of god make clear to these people that there must be a dozen laws this violates. I see insurance application, invoices, disputes, everything on at least a weekly basis.

I have no idea what my legal position in this is. I tried reaching out to the senders, but I am afraid of reaching out to the C-levels directly because who knows how they respond.

Bottom line, people make typos all the time, and it’s not just dots that cause this. People are just terrible at email and email is terrible for sensitive documents.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#258

Post by headShrinker »

I used to have a dot in my gmail address then I started receiving messages to my address without the dot. The messages were from people I didn't know to people I didn't know. I thought there was something wrong and I was receiving other peoples messages.

And this is where it gets weird... I was.

Just not because of the dot. My gmail handle is pretty short, 6 chars. First name last initial, pretty cool. I got it during the early in the first beta year, (gmail was beta for like 10 years.) However 10 years later I'm now receiving emails in german, parking tickets from cities I've never been, paid subscriptions, access to gmail and facebook accounts because people set my gmail handle as their recovery address. I can even unlock a guys car from the manufacturers web UI whom I've never met. The best/worst by far is the time the FBI reached out to me, which I thought was some bad phishing attempt and replied mildly taunting them. However, it was in fact a real FBI agent who wrote back noticeably annoyed at my flippant response. There was a vailed threat that if I don't take this seriously things would happen. A lump formed in my throat. I called them and for 5 minutes it was kind of scary. I found out a doctor had been using my email handle for oxytocin prescriptions and they were investigating this doctor... I explained that I had received other messages for this doctor and approximated his age and name, explained my short desirable email address, at which point the agent broke their stern professional tone and we shared a little chuckle.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#259

Post by sethammons »

robbyking wrote: post #172

A coworker of mine got an email once containing important scholarship information intended for a high school kid in Florida. He did a little looking online and found the kid's and his parent's actual email addresses and forwarded the email to them. So here's where it gets weird/dumb: the kid replies to my friend and his parents and says, "hey mom, you put the wrong email address on my application, there's no dot in m…

similar. A younger fella has my first and last name. I've gotten iphone receipts and questions on when I'm coming back to the Y (in very far away location). The best was when I got his deployment orders. I figured I probably was not supposed to ship out on a submarine, so I reached out to the sender to let them know. /shrug.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#260

Post by atuladhar »

paxys wrote: post #216

Everyone in this thread is replying with instances of receiving emails meant for other people, but dots have nothing to do with that. It's people typing in the wrong email address in a signup page (with dots or without), and the service not verifying it. The latter is what really needs to be fixed. I personally find this Gmail feature (as well as the ability to append +anything to your email address) extremely useful…

Thank you! I am also confused by some of these complaints.
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