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Wed, 06 Jul 2011

Story of dotted emails

Around 3-6 months ago, I've started getting email from Facebook for a certain other person on my dsegan account on gmail (only forwarded to my other email, and barely used). Knowing Facebook requires email verification, I was surprised to see that, but since it stopped in a day or two, I've ignored it, attributing it to probable lax policy on Facebook account creation (eg. they could be letting people use their accounts for some time even before they confirm the email or something like that).

Not long after, I've seen more emails sent to a person named with a first name starting on "D" as well and having the identical last name, and directed to d.segan account on gmail. Note the dot in the middle.

This still happens from time to time, and here is what I suspect:

Google seems to have allowed at one point in the past accounts with dots in the name to be registered as separate accounts
In the meantime, they have disallowed that and made them all aliases to the same account (eg. dsegan ≡ d.segan ≡ ds.egan…). Old accounts have been left as they were.
Sometime in the last 6 months, they've decided to fix this inconsistency.
I had registered an account earlier than that other person

It seems as if Google has just decided to delete those accounts created later: meaning, a bunch of people lost email accounts they have used for some time. I've heard reports of other cases like this (I know of at least one other person who started getting emails sent to the same gmail address with a dot in a different place).

If I am not wrong in my analysis, here's a few questions to ponder:

Why would Google put sanitizing the system and avoiding bug workarounds ahead of actual people? Did they at least try to let them know of the fact what they are doing?
Do they care about privacy? I've already gotten some emails which could be considered confidential and some which are very much private.
Are there any better reasons for distributed identities (which emails are, but Google is quickly becoming a monopolist) than realizing that otherwise, you don't have control of your identity at all?
Did any of the people who got crapped on like this get another email account at gmail? (masochists :)

And if I am wrong, wtf is going on?

[16:07] | [] | # | G | | TB

This is a feature ;) Ars Technica talked about it here:

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/01/6022.ars

While delivery of email ignores the ".", filters are still able to see the full username the email was sent to, so this can be used to your advantage. Some people use this to track where spam/etc. are being sourced (i.e. use "username" on trusted sites, but use "user.name" for less trusted sites).
— Posted by mossholderm at Wed Jul 6 16:24:03 2011

You seem to have misunderstood the post. I am aware of the feature. Except that it seems they did let people register separate accounts with a dot (eg. I had "dsegan", another person had entirely different account "d.segan"), and they decided to fix the bug by... killing the account of that other person. Or so it seems.
— Posted by Danilo at Wed Jul 6 16:26:47 2011

Also, I am not talking lightly. The emails from facebook were not spam, they were genuine facebook emails (I've checked SMTP envelope to confirm that as well). Facebook has confirmed this email separately from mine, because I never got confirmation request myself. Thus proving, "d.segan" and "dsegan" were two distinct accounts on gmail.
— Posted by Danilo at Wed Jul 6 16:29:32 2011

Google ignores dots in gmail addresses, and always has since inception. This Google help article discusses it, but does not mention that this was part of the design from the beginning:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10313

When you registered "dsegan" with gmail, there never was, nor ever will be again, a separate user with a "d.segan" address. "dsegan", "d.segan", and even "d.s.e.g.a.n" all belong to you forever.

I suspect the Facebook emails are reaching you because Facebook does not know that "dsegan" and "d.segan" are the same gmail user--someone likely entered in one address or the other (either mistakenly or on purpose, for anonymity) and Facebook didn't find it in their database, so assumed it was unique.
— Posted by Phil at Wed Jul 6 17:01:15 2011

This is scary... mine is dk.vali @ ... for a few years now. I hope they won't fck it up because it's my main email address and I care about some sort of spacer in between.
— Posted by Dread Knight at Wed Jul 6 17:15:17 2011

A while back some spammers were using the "dot" in order to send spam and I think this is to combat that.

I would get spam from username, u.sername, us.ername, use.ername, user.name etc @ gmail.com where the script seems to put the dot after the next letter.

I can see how it can hit legitimate users who had used a dot though.

Interesting dilemma.
— Posted by You at Wed Jul 6 19:49:16 2011

I regularly get seemingly legitimate emails for at least four other people who, for whatever reason, think they're shaunm at gmail. For one of those people, I get Facebook notifications. Sometimes the email address have a dot (shaun.m is common), but sometimes not. Some of them could just be somebody misunderstanding an email address over the phone or something, but as you point out, Facebook requires email verification. The whole thing baffles me.
— Posted by Shaun McCance at Thu Jul 7 00:19:26 2011

I'm not sure that Facebook requires email verification in all cases.
I'm pretty sure if you tag someone in a photo or note you can enter an email address instead of a person and it will notify that email address (unless it's been opted out.)
— Posted by Elliott at Thu Jul 7 02:01:22 2011

I've also received Facebook registration emails, but addressed to precisely my gmail address. I've never responded to any of them, but keep on getting reminders and irritating invitations.

The emails mention someone else's name, and it seems as if someone simply mistyped their email address and entered mine instead of their own. So it seems some mail can get through without confirmation, and certain invitations might not even need anything to be able to send the invitations.
— Posted by F Wolff at Thu Jul 7 11:22:51 2011

Right, so it seems likely it's just a matter of Facebook being very lax with their emailing someone else policy, and people mistyping addresses.
— Posted by Danilo at Fri Jul 8 11:54:20 2011

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Wed, 06 Jul 2011

Story of dotted emails