E-mail idiots (rant/language)

[Fenrus]

Well, looks like seraphim.mike@gmail.com and seraphimmike@gmail.com are letting me sign in... weird...

[MadMike]

I got a strange email from an insurance company a few years ago. I thought it was just some weird spam at first, but then I saw it had all kinds of insurance info attached to it. The original email from the customer was in the history, and I saw the customer had an address identical to mine, except that his had an underscore in the middle, while mine didn't.

I was nice enough to reply back to the agent and let him know of his mistake.

[EricKei]

They probably decided originally to support it as different e-mails with a "." in it originally -- then thought "people are dumb" and later considered them the same ---- possibly causing problems with people who have already registered one with a "." and those without one.

I think this is closest to the truth. I actually do read their little Labs and blog notices on the signin page on occasion (for when I check it from work -- bad place to stay logged in to a non-work account ^_^).

This is a conscious change they made a few months back. Their intention was something like "if you supect that site X is gonna sell your address, use first.last@gm or first-last@gm (or whatever) to sign on, and it will all get delivered to firstlast@gm -- then set a filter by the TO block. If you start getting spam to one of the variants, that site sold your email and you can nail them on it."

In any case, the system is working the way they intended it.

If you plan to use the variants for communication purposes (say, just to clarify a loooong addy), ya might wanna send yourself an email as the variant first to test it out.

[Boomer]

My Gmail name is my last name only -- a fairly common name, too.

Between the folks who forget their initial, or first name, or whatever, opening my gmail is always an adventure.

Just to make things even more fun, my last name is also a common word found in every English dictionary. Sometimes, when I'm really bored, I check out the zillions of messages in my spam folder -- makes for some entertaining reading.

[Ulrika]

This thread makes me happy that my name, and subsequently my gmail address, is really uncommon and therefore unlikely to cause confusion. At the same time, it makes me sad that I don't have any fun stories... or free porn.

[Ironclad Alibi]

At the same time, it makes me sad that I don't have any fun stories... or free porn.

Be happy. A lot of that free porn comes with a virus or other malware.