[ColinWright]

> "did you mean: [e-mail]?"

This is incredibly annoying, I agree, but having run a service for which people type their email addresses, and having seen just how many people can't actually type their own email address properly (currently running at about 5%) I'm not surprised that a service aimed at non-technical people puts in attempted safeguards like this.

And my service is for technical people - I can't imagine what it's like for genuinely open services.

[mercer]

could you give some examples of the types of mistakes they make?

[ColinWright]

Omitting letters in their username, getting the domain wrong by omitting or mutating letters, commas instead of periods, spaces, and more. Some, such as commas and spaces are easy to catch, but mutations in the username are pretty much impossible to catch.

Without digging through my records I can't be more specific, but in general I was horrified at how many can't actually spell their own names correctly. Seriously, one person typed jojn.dpe instead of john.doe (name deliberately changed to protect the user). Sometimes it's possible to guess the correct username/domain, but sometimes it simply isn't.