Email address with one dot different is arriving in my mail box

January 28, 2019 6:47 AM

So - for clarification sake and illustration - say my email address (which I've had for over 20 years) is [e-mail] - an email with [e-mail] is arriving into my mailbox. I see that I also able to use [e-mail] as my account name and the sent email also arrives in my Sent folder.

Is this something Gmail does as a matter of course? Allowing characters to be added to email accounts - then grouping them together under one name?

TIA

posted by watercarrier to Computers & Internet (16 answers total)

Best answer: Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses
posted by ManInSuit at 6:48 AM on January 28, 2019 [13 favorites]

Best answer: Yes, Gmail functionally allows periods in account names, so it treats [e-mail] the same as [e-mail] the same as [e-mail].
posted by Special Agent Dale Cooper at 6:49 AM on January 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

You also have [e-mail], and [e-mail], and any other post-+ identifiers you care for. So you can give out different email addresses to differerent people/organisations and filter/label/trace accordingly...

(Confirmation, these are old bits of functionality that don't seem to be well known and so cause a lot of confusion when accidentally encountered....)
posted by samworm at 6:53 AM on January 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

any other post-+ identifiers you care for.

But you'll find in practice that a lot of websites won't accept strange patterns like that when you are entering an email address. Not because the + is illegal, but because the programmer of the site wrote a filter that couldn't handle it.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:57 AM on January 28, 2019 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: But wait. Where does this permission end? Is there anything programmed in Gmail for someone not to be using my email address with added characters? Will my email be exclusive to me up to a point and what is that point exactly? Thank you again.
posted by watercarrier at 7:04 AM on January 28, 2019

Best answer: Other people can't claim an email address like yours but with dots and + additives. They are alternate spellings of YOUR email address and exclusive to you.
posted by Obscure Reference at 7:12 AM on January 28, 2019 [5 favorites]

Best answer: But wait. Where does this permission end?


It ends because google doesn't allow anyone to register any combination of [e-mail] where the differences are only various "." characters.

So if you register as [e-mail], then your.name, y.o.u.r.n.a.m.e., yo.re.na.me and any other combination you can think of won't work.

This is a smart thing that google does, in my opinion, as it prevents someone from trying identity theft be registering an email address that is close to yours.
posted by Paladin1138 at 7:13 AM on January 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

Best answer: As far as I know, owning [e-mail] will not allow anyone else to sign up for an account that can be obtained from taking the string "UnbelievablySarahWiser" and doing any of the following:

• changing the case of any letters (i.e., UnBeLiEvAbLySaRaHwIsEr)
• inserting any number of periods (as discussed above)
• Adding "+" and any characters thereafter.

E-mails sent to any such address will go to you. However, another person could sign up for any e-mail address that is "close" to this one, such as "UnbelievablySarahWiser2" or "UnbeleivablySarahWiser" or "SarahWiserUnbelievably", and then any e-mails sent to those addresses would go to them and not to you.

So if you register as [e-mail], then your.name, y.o.u.r.n.a.m.e., yo.re.na.me and any other combination you can think of won't work.

Note that "yo.re.na.me" (literally) would actually be an e-mail someone else could use in this example, due to the misspelling.
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:14 AM on January 28, 2019 [1 favorite]

Best answer: However, another person could sign up for any e-mail address that is "close" to this one, such as "UnbelievablySarahWiser2" or "UnbeleivablySarahWiser" or "SarahWiserUnbelievably", and then any e-mails sent to those addresses would go to them and not to you

As evidenced by a kindly if naive older lady from South Carolina who shares my initials, and thinks her email address is "[e-mail]" - her email is ACTUALLY "[e-mail]", the other one is mine :-/
posted by Paladin1138 at 7:18 AM on January 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

This thread is getting too complicated.

Somebody out there made an error. They wrote to [e-mail] instead of, say, [e-mail]. The problem will correct itself when Sarah investigates why she isn't getting some of her mail.

To answer your other question, dots can be removed or added in a gmail address without effect. See ManInSuit above for the full story.
posted by JimN2TAW at 7:18 AM on January 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

Best answer: as far as Google is concerned, [e-mail] and [e-mail] are the same person and will always refer to the same email inbox. Their real email is probably [e-mail], but someone got confused and sent the email to [e-mail], which shows up in your inbox because your email is [e-mail]
posted by BungaDunga at 7:19 AM on January 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: alrighty then. Thank you :)
posted by watercarrier at 7:23 AM on January 28, 2019

In Gmail you can set up filters to get rid of stuff like that, so [e-mail] is fine but [e-mail] goes into the trash automatically.
posted by Slinga at 8:14 AM on January 28, 2019 [2 favorites]

My non-mefi Gmail address is my initials and not uncommon last name. Just this morning I write back to a company to tell them I have not done business with them and they have a bad email address for their invoice. People are bad at entering their email address correctly.
posted by theora55 at 10:28 AM on January 28, 2019 [3 favorites]

The problem will correct itself when Sarah investigates why she isn't getting some of her mail.

As someone who has FirstNameLastName at Gmail, I just want to let you know that you'll be getting this person's email for all time and she may never notice! But that's more annoying for her since she's not getting her emails than it is for you. (What is more annoying is when people use your email, thinking it is their own, to sign up for shit and then you cannot use your OWN email to sign up for the same thing.)
posted by Countess Sandwich at 4:22 PM on January 28, 2019 [6 favorites]

@Countess Sandwich - I've had people sign up for things with my email thinking it's theirs. I do a password reset, delete the account, and remake it for myself.
posted by Amanda B at 7:43 PM on January 29, 2019