Lost in translation
September 26, 2015 2:41 PM   Subscribe

Why are texts to an email address being diverted?

My mother tried to send a text to my brother; for whatever reason she entered his gmail address instead of his phone number, which should just send the text to his email. She sent a few and then got a message back asking "who is this? I keep getting texts from you" my brother tried sending a text to his gmail and it worked, then my sister tried and it didn't work, she got back a text with question marks, presumably from the same person. Muy mother is at&t and my sister Verizon, fwiw. We didn't want to ask to many questions out of fear of some scam, but really it seemed like someone perplexed. What could cause that diversion?
posted by Red Loop to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)
 
Does your brother's Gmail address have periods in it? If so, the texts are probably being sent to the person with the same Gmail address without periods. Gmail doesn't recognize periods, even though it lets you use them.

Your brother sending himself a text most likely acts like a closed loop, so that's why it worked for him.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:02 PM on September 26, 2015


Does your brother's Gmail address have periods in it? If so, the texts are probably being sent to the person with the same Gmail address without periods.

Gmail addresses with and without periods are the same thing.
example.address@gmail.com and exampleaddress@gmail.com are the same Gmail account and will both go to the same email account inbox.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:09 PM on September 26, 2015 [8 favorites]


Did you check the email address? Did your mom put it in wrong then your sister used the wrong one your mom was using?
posted by discopolo at 3:12 PM on September 26, 2015


Response by poster: It's the right address she sent it to, and my sister sent it to, and there are no periods in the address.
posted by Red Loop at 3:55 PM on September 26, 2015


Response by poster: Your brother sending himself a text most likely acts like a closed loop, so that's why it worked for him.
Would it? He sent a text to his gmail account, not an email to email or text to text, you know? It just seems the weirdest thing, I don't know if my brother should contact gmail or what.
posted by Red Loop at 5:53 PM on September 26, 2015


Who did your mom get the message back from? It obviously wasn't a response from your brother's email address. Is the email address being converted into numbers? There should be a way to get more details on the message to show who sent it. I'm an Android user so not sure what options there are for an iPhone.
posted by AppleTurnover at 5:53 PM on September 27, 2015


The most likely explanation is that your mother got the email address slightly wrong. I know you said that the address was right, but double-check anyway. If your brother's Gmail address is some variation on his name, and his name isn't very rare, there are likely to be dozens of Gmail addresses that look very similar. It's particularly tricky on mobile devices where characters (e.g., a lowercase i, an uppercase I, a lowercase l, and the numeral 1) can look almost identical.
posted by brianogilvie at 6:44 PM on September 27, 2015


Response by poster: It was absolutely the right email address, we checked, double-checked and triple-checked. Our latest theory is it has something to do with Apple's imessage screwing something up somewhere in the chain.
posted by Red Loop at 7:33 PM on September 27, 2015


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