Name detection in gmail?

Neat feature discovered

[adfree]

I wrote an email to someone using this format:
[e-mail]

Not knowing that the person does not use the period dividing the name in the gmail account.

Sure enough my messages arrived at: [e-mail]

Obviously gmail detects such things: "try firstnamelastname IF firstname.lastname = 0" type query, pretty neat I say.

[rogerd]

Hmmm, autocorrecting and forwarding seems kind of risky - any time the email provider guesses at a recipient there's a chance the mail will be delivered to the wrong person.

[trillianjedi]

I agree Roger, I prefer the mail to get bounced if I've made an error, rather than it potentially getting sent to the wrong person.

TJ

[limbo]

I use a [e-mail] addy so I thought I'd give it a try. Worked for me too. I think it is a handy tool as people can often mistype/mispell e-mail addy's especially if punctuation characters are involved. As a test I tried to register the other addy without the dot, but it would not let me, so by these means no-one will receive mail intended for you, by mistake. Niceone G!

[Essex_boy]

I suppose its alright where teh domain name isnt something like hotmail otherwise I could imagine teh implications.

[Teknorat]

Yeah this just one of teh cool features built into teh gmail. ;)

[semiprofessional]

if you play you will work out that "."'s are actually ignored in usernames for gmail! you can email to [e-mail] and it will be delivered to
[e-mail]

Also the + form of addressing works which is fab. You can even forward or automatically delete `+ style' addresses meaning that you can have an infinite number of addresses and turn them off when they collect too much spam.

eg [e-mail] and [e-mail] will both be delivered to fred101's inbox. neat!

[Teknorat]

For sure! And if you set up [e-mail] and get it really loaded with spam then create a filter to forward it all to your best friend or worst enemies address the fun never stops!

[Reflection]

Thats pretty cool, I'm gonna have to start trying it out.

[kodaks]

I emailed GMAIL, asking if this was a mistake or if it just was a new feature, and have not received a response as of this morning. I'll let you guys know what the response is ASAP.

[mm1220]

Take a look at page referring to gmail usernames:
[gmail.google.com...]

Dots or periods don't count as characters when creating your username

I presume this means that they ignore them completely...

[Sanenet]

I vaguely remember - waaay back when they first launched Gmail - some discussion about how they were going to implement those exact features in order to allow people to setup their own email aliases "on the fly" for spam purposes.

Looked like they got around to doing it! You'd think they'd tell people about it though.

[BReflection]

It's been around since they started Gmail. Whenever I sign up at a site I do [e-mail]. When I start getting spam I can see who the *** was that sold my address, forward all that mail to the trash, and cease doing business with them. The only irritation is webmasters who violate standards and do not allow + signs in e-mail addresses. See this resource for a breakdown of what should and shouldn't be allowed/used: [remote.org...]

[edited by: eelixduppy at 9:17 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2009]

[freeflight2]

it's not a feature - gmail simply adheres to one of the mail RFCs which outlined years/decades ago that .+ etc. are ok but should be ignored