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Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

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Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#201

Post by wlll »

ben0x539 wrote: post #183
sydd wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I were a site accepting email addresses, I could see rejecting "+" stuff because chances are it's people trying to pull something funny like registering multiple accounts when I only want one per email address. If I were less confrontational I might just silently strip the "+" part.

Sites that do any of that stuff are infuriating. Great if that's what you're going for.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#202

Post by renewiltord »

jeffbee wrote: post #197
renewiltord wrote: post #190

Someone registered for Facebook with myname@gmail.com. I'd registered with my.name@gmail.com and when I got the email that I'd added the account I clicked yes before reading (that's a mistake you make at most once) and now that guy has a Facebook account I can't log in to and I can't remove this email from the account and I can't remove the notifications either. Part of the reason is that Facebook verifies you're the…

In gmail, open the settings, go to "Accounts", add an address to "Send mail as ..." then you can send mail with as many dots as you like.

Could have sworn I tried this. Let me give it another shot! Thank you!

EDIT: Interesting, they no longer send me that email. Probably got flagged.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#203

Post by xbmcuser »

justusthane wrote: post #77
searchableguy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't receive any junk mails anymore after switching to my custom domain.

It’s weird, but that’s been my experience too. I switched off Gmail (where I got tons of spam, although most properly caught by the spam filter) several years ago, and have received fewer than 200 spam emails in total since switching. I know this because my new host won’t allow the personalized spam filter to be enabled until you’ve received 200 spam. I’m not at all careful to keep my email address hidden on the inte…

with all the data breaches spammers have millions of verified email addresses no need to scan the web for more.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#204

Post by johnnyo »

adenner wrote: post #173
liquidgecka wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

As the lucky early adopter of gmail I got my last name only @gmail.com. It has been a blessing and a curse. I have a boilerplate "you have the wrong address" email in multiple languages that I use to reply to the first email from real people. If they persist they then get added to my auto-reply "you have the wrong address" and delete rule. For automated emails, I don't even bother trying to unsubscribe. They all get…

I have a similar address and get a lot of similar email.

My personal favorite was a contract offer to play for a minor league baseball team in the Midwest a few summers back.

I also once got hired by the National Park Service for what sounded like a nice gig as a park ranger.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#205

Post by mendelmaleh »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #164
justusthane wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s weird, but that’s been my experience too. I switched off Gmail (where I got tons of spam, although most properly caught by the spam filter) several years ago, and have received fewer than 200 spam emails in total since switching. I know this because my new host won’t allow the personalized spam filter to be enabled until you’ve received 200 spam. I’m not at all careful to keep my email address hidden on the inte…

There doesn't seem to be a lot of undirected spam. No one seems to be harvesting git repos, for example. I keep dedicated email addresses for most purposes, and the two that are getting any are a random mailing list, and the kickstarter address. That one has been caught in a vortex of spam, clearly meaning that kickstarter can't keep their mouths shut about customer emails.

I'm pretty sure the campaigns get your email address, I often get emails directly from them.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#206

Post by jeffbee »

kevincox wrote: post #161
jeffbee wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is fine if you want to try to block duplicate emails, but you should always continue to use the original. But yes, it has false positives and false negatives. I don't think I would call it "broken". But at the end of the day doing this kind of comparison probably raises more questions than it solves.

It's not even fine for that. If you assume that JayNesmith@ and JayneSmith@ are duplicates, you're eventually going to annoy someone.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#207

Post by Macha »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #164
justusthane wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s weird, but that’s been my experience too. I switched off Gmail (where I got tons of spam, although most properly caught by the spam filter) several years ago, and have received fewer than 200 spam emails in total since switching. I know this because my new host won’t allow the personalized spam filter to be enabled until you’ve received 200 spam. I’m not at all careful to keep my email address hidden on the inte…

There doesn't seem to be a lot of undirected spam. No one seems to be harvesting git repos, for example. I keep dedicated email addresses for most purposes, and the two that are getting any are a random mailing list, and the kickstarter address. That one has been caught in a vortex of spam, clearly meaning that kickstarter can't keep their mouths shut about customer emails.

I've got a catch all email redirect for my address. I do get a decent volume of spam these days.

Most of it goes to:

* admin@.com - listed in whois publicly for a few years, understandable

* @ - started coming in 2014, the fact they were breached only became properly known in 2016.

* @ - This is the actual email address I give to in person contacts. Not quite sure how it ended up on spam lists, my best guesses are from a recruiter sharing it, git commits (though the fact the address I use way more commonly for git isn't there indicates probably not) or someone just figured it out.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#208

Post by ben0x539 »

wlll wrote: post #201
ben0x539 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were a site accepting email addresses, I could see rejecting "+" stuff because chances are it's people trying to pull something funny like registering multiple accounts when I only want one per email address. If I were less confrontational I might just silently strip the "+" part.

Sites that do any of that stuff are infuriating. Great if that's what you're going for.

My understanding is that it's okay to be infuriating if I have an analytics query or something claiming that it'll not affect 99ish % of users and also save customer support a bunch of work.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#209

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

justusthane wrote: post #87
shanecleveland wrote: post #57

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 did that for a while, and then my provider decided that people using catch-all e-mail addresses were causing their systems to store too much spam and stopped letting people use them.

That left me in a slight bind as I had used well over 50 different e-mail addresses. I had switched to Gmail as my primary e-mail address, but hadn't bothered changing my accounts. Luckily, they allowed a very easy way to create forwarding addresses and basically set it up to forward 50+ addresses to one.

Re: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses

#210

Post by evolve2k »

johnchristopher wrote: post #179
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…

> At this point my coworker gave up and the kid presumably lost his scholarship because his family didn't know you could keep your Gmail address when you moved houses. Didn't your colleague forward the information ?

I think their meaning was they stopped replying to further email back and forth with people who clearly were very far from understanding and whose ongoing conversation was becoming increasingly frustrating to deal with due to their misplace mental model around how email works which then then relied upon to continue to correspond with the sender.
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