For a while I was getting emails that were sent to @googlemail.com (I have @gmail.com) destined for someone in the UK, including flight confirmations and subway card top up reminders. Either that guy didn't know his email address when he booked his flight and registered for a few other things, or something was up with Google's handling of GMail/Google Mail addresses.
GMail Can't Read a Period
11–18 of 18 posts
Re: GMail Can't Read a Period
#12Not a bug. Feature. GMail ignores periods in email addresses. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/1-awesome-gmail-tip-you-dont-kn... It isn't possible for the accounts michael.laccetti@gma.. and michaellaccetti@gma.. to belong to different users, as far as Google is concerned it's the same user.
Yup. Feature. Allows you to do all sorts of fun things...like signing up for many twitter accounts on one gmail address.
You can also use the +subscript feature for that. youremail+twitter1@gmail.com youremail+twitter2@gmail.com. Allows you to filter based on account as well.
Re: GMail Can't Read a Period
#13Because of this little feature I've ended up on several ultra right wing mailing lists (subscriptions that were meant for someone who shares my name, obviously). It's horrifying and hilarious at the same time.
Hilarious, until you think it's possibly also happening in reverse.
The weeksie doppleganger is probably over on a fox news forum talking about how the communists at Google are pumping him with their liberal agenda, sending through masses of material about 'brainwashing' and 'criminal gangs' (I mean 'programming' and 'Hacker News').
Re: GMail Can't Read a Period
#14To all the commenters here saying "it's not a bug it's a feature":
Ok, but how did the other michael sign up with the non-period name? That's the bug, surely?
Re: GMail Can't Read a Period
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. Feature. Allows you to do all sorts of fun things...like signing up for many twitter accounts on one gmail address.
You can also use the +subscript feature for that. youremail+twitter1@gmail.com youremail+twitter2@gmail.com. Allows you to filter based on account as well.
Except it's still distressingly common for braindead email address validation scripts to not accept the plus character.
So, I'll use the plus to sign up for something that may produce junk (to differentiate it), and then attempt to unsubscribe--producing an error as the web form email validation to unsubscribe doesn't accept the plus. Doh!
Re: GMail Can't Read a Period
#16To all the commenters here saying "it's not a bug it's a feature": Ok, but how did the other michael sign up with the non-period name? That's the bug, surely?
He probably didn't. He probably meant @ymail, or firstlast3@gmail or some other permutation.
At least, that's been the case for most of the misdirected email I've received.
Re: GMail Can't Read a Period
#17Because of this little feature I've ended up on several ultra right wing mailing lists (subscriptions that were meant for someone who shares my name, obviously). It's horrifying and hilarious at the same time.
Hilarious, until you think it's possibly also happening in reverse. The weeksie doppleganger is probably over on a fox news forum talking about how the communists at Google are pumping him with their liberal agenda, sending through masses of material about 'brainwashing' and 'criminal gangs' (I mean 'programming' and 'Hacker News').
Oh, I think that makes it even more hilarious.
Re: GMail Can't Read a Period
#18Just a theory. Could it be that google allowed dot as legitimate characters (ie. i.rock and irock are completely different) during the initial launch of Gmail and then moved to the present setting of ignoring dots?
[Just tried creating a new account very similar to my existing one and I couldn't do that. This suggests this is not an existing bug for sure.]