GMail Can't Read a Period (opens in new tab)

Not a bug. Feature. GMail ignores periods in email addresses. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/1-awesome-gmail-tip-you-dont-kn...

It isn't possible for the accounts michael.laccetti@gma.. and michaellaccetti@gma.. to belong to different users, as far as Google is concerned it's the same user.

I think the other michael doesn't know his own email address.

Because of this little feature I've ended up on several ultra right wing mailing lists (subscriptions that were meant for someone who shares my name, obviously). It's horrifying and hilarious at the same time.

My wife has firstnamelastname@gmail.com and she is constantly getting emails to firstname.lastname@gmail.com intended for someone in another state.

According to http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe... : "Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address; they'll all go to your inbox, and only yours"

It is a feature of Gmail and I think that it is great. Person_A registers franz.josef@gmail.com. All mail sent to franzjosef@, franz.josef@, franzjos.ef@, fra.nzjosef@ will end up in person A's Gmail account. Now someone wishing to send an e-mail to another Franz Josef (Person_B) but not being sure of his Gmail address guesses and sends it to Person A's Gmail address. Not Google's fault. Google will not let let another person register franzjosef@ with or without a period in any location. All periods are ignored.

To all the commenters here saying "it's not a bug it's a feature":

Ok, but how did the other michael sign up with the non-period name? That's the bug, surely?

As said by others, this is a feature. I remember that this problem really happened at the very beginning of Gmail (2004) but it was quickly sorted out once they realized that some people had managed to sign up with different accounts that were actually the same.

For a while I was getting emails that were sent to <me>@googlemail.com (I have <me>@gmail.com) destined for someone in the UK, including flight confirmations and subway card top up reminders. Either that guy didn't know his email address when he booked his flight and registered for a few other things, or something was up with Google's handling of GMail/Google Mail addresses.

Just a theory. Could it be that google allowed dot as legitimate characters (ie. i.rock and irock are completely different) during the initial launch of Gmail and then moved to the present setting of ignoring dots? [Just tried creating a new account very similar to my existing one and I couldn't do that. This suggests this is not an existing bug for sure.]

I have the same issue with gmail. I have fn.ln@gmail and all of the emails for fnln@gmail shows up in my inbox. Oh, the info that shows up are his pay information, job offers ... I don't use this address often, but when i do log in, hilarity ensues :)