It is, but the key point is that this doesn't lead to people sending mail to the wrong address since nobody can sign up to "the wrong address" in the first place. There's one address allowed, aliased to all permutations.
It does lead to people sending mail to the wrong address, from personal experience since Gmail was in beta. I've gotten sensitive emails and account signups with different dots for years.
But the cause of that appears to be user error -- people thinking they own email addresses that are not actually theirs.
This happens to me all the time. There are two people, one in Massachusetts and one in Suffolk UK who have my same name and regularly put in FirstLast@gmail as opposed to the first.last@gmail that I use. The Massachusetts person does this because they forget that their gmail is the full version of “first” as opposed to the shorter version I use. The Brit is confusing gmail for hotmail. Yes really. Most people don’t care that much about computers. If it’s possible to screw up, someone will.
Someone gets righteously indignant that this cannot happen in every thread about dots in gmail, despite the fact that there are many people it happens to. They’re not making it up, why would someone do that?
Please look at my example up thread. It’s the combination of mistakes amplified by the dots. The dots make it worse by far.
I just searched for my name with no dots in my gmail. Man. It’s a dumpster fire. I have to put up with hundreds and hundred of wrong mails monthly because this feature amplifies the mistakes so much. And it adds to spam because other people type the wrong mails into forms and gmail “fixes” it by ignoring the lack of dots. It’s honestly infuriating. We know we own all versions. We get it. That’s what causes extra work for us and makes us like the product less.
My experience would be significantly improved if I could have all the non canonical addresses bounce. I agree that I would also like nobody else to own one of the other dot versions but that’s also possible.
I’ve gotten emails from some other Gmail account, for example an Uber receipt. I found that by digging in the header that there was a “x-forwarded-to:” to me. My guess is that the original user accidentally configured a bad email forward.
That's the point I think, the dots aren't causing any issues here, some people just assume their account is f.m.lastname@gmail.com and many of them are too stubborn to accept that it's not.
They never had an email address with or without dots that's made up of the same letters as your email address. Their email address is probably very different (maybe they forgot to add a number, or a middle initial, or typed Gmail when they should've typed Outlook). The dots are just a stylistic choice.
Exactly. The dots are useful from a UX perspective, as it makes "incorrectly addressed" email more obvious.
I've spent way too much time thinking about this.
Well, specifically about the kind of person who would use an email address they don't own to (a) buy a house, (b) apply for a FL sheriff's job, (c) conduct financial transactions, etc. (all actual examples I've received).
You think you have a bead on how ignorant people are, and then you realize there's a long tail you weren't aware of...
I think there's also a distinct possibility that the senders just have the wrong email address, especially when it contains a name.
You could own steve.brown@gmail.com but someone you only occasionally do business with might have accidentally put down steven.brown@gmail.com when you first met. Emails back and forth will work (because they can reply to your emails) but when they try to send you email, someone else will receive it.
This can also go unnoticed (i.e. when someone sends an email stating "when are you sending the documents?" -> "I already did, maybe they ended up in spam, here you have them again"). People probably won't notice unless the unintended recipient tells the sender that they got the email address wrong. I imagine that might happen a few times, but after a few years of other people using your email address, you'd stop bothering.
I generally try and reply with "This email address isn't owned by the person you're trying to reach. Please reach out to them and reconfirm what email they want you to use."
Responses have been pretty bizarre though. I usually get what amounts to an "Okay".
I would have expected some sort of "Could you please delete those sensitive documents we sent you?" at minimum.
Also bizarre... I don't have a very common name or email address for my main Gmail.
I can only imagine what john.smith@gmail.com has to deal with.
From a solution / feature perspective, it'd be nice to have a auto-response + trash on anything other than allowlisted dots and plusses. Maybe Gmail supports this? The worst offenders finally got the picture, so I didn't dig into it.
The point is "ignoring dots" doesn't lead to "constantly getting e-mail for other people" (because there are no other people that own the "dotted" version of the email).
It does though. My gmail account has a dot. For some reason someone with a similar name to mine must have for believed his address was the non dotted version of mine and to this day I keep getting emails addressed to this other person... and yes, it is a real person who I've managed to contact.
The point is that without the dots rule I'd never get those emails, and the senders would get their message bounced back right away.