MetaChat - Did everybody else but me already realize

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26 January 2006

Did everybody else but me already realize that gmail ignores periods in the email address before the at sign? Feel free to send me email at nobodybutyours[at]gmail or nobody.but.yours[at]gmail or no..body....but..y.o.u.r.s[at]gmail or any other permutation you can dream up.→[More:]I discovered this accidentally. Does email address parsing work like this universally?

post by: nobody at: 09:30 | 18 comments

Really? I find that quite odd.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 26 January | 09:41

Well that's a cool little feature.

It is a feature, right?

posted by iconomy 26 January | 09:42

I didn't believe it, so I sent you an e-mail.. and it didn't bounce back, so I guess it worked.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 26 January | 09:52

What about people who have periods as part of their email address? My wife uses the lastname.firstname@gmail.com so I find this quite odd.

I know gmail ignores the + sign. I use that as a filter when I subscribe to something on the web.

posted by terrapin 26 January | 10:26

Funny - I just noticed this a few days ago myself.

posted by taz 26 January | 10:30

terrapin, it looks like if you sign up with lastname.firstname@gmail.com, lastnamefirstname@gmail.com works as well.

I haven't tried absurd lengths of periods yet. I imagine the limit is just that of the regular character limit. I was surprised enough that it handled three periods in a row.

While we're here, can we come up with a convention for beginning sentences with otherwise lowercased usernames? I feel bad capitalizing terrapin's T in the first paragraph, but I also feel bad starting the paragraph uncapitalized. It's a decent paragraph and it deserves respect.

posted by nobody 26 January | 10:39

nobody, I think it's important to respect the capitalization customization of usernames over the convention of starting paragraphs capitalized.

See, I just did it right there. I'm badass.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 26 January | 10:44

I know some folks can be picky about the capitalization of their usernames, or abbreviations, etc, but for the record I am not. Call me Terrapin, terp, TeRp, tErRapin, or whatever. Just don't call me late for the spiked punch or the hookha.

posted by terrapin 26 January | 11:11

Yeah, I discovered this when some Christian girl with my same name joined a "small group" book discussion and promptly started emailing her other Chrisitan friends. I have firstname.lastname, and somehow she was able to register firstnamelastname, and GMail has been confusing them. Then she tried to register firstname.lastname as well, and I sent her a "cease and desist or I will call out the minions of Satan on you" note. Since there there hasn't been any problem; I may have driven her to another webmail service.

posted by Miko 26 January | 11:25

I just sent an email to myself, to iconomy.@gmail.com, and I didn't get it. I feel sad.

posted by iconomy 26 January | 11:27

Don't be sad!

≡ Click to see image ≡

posted by Hugh Janus 26 January | 11:36

Ok I'm not sad anymore! Just drubk.

≡ Click to see image ≡

posted by iconomy 26 January | 12:27

I think you fuckers broke gmail with all these dots. I am getting a server error now. Are you all happy? Are YOU?

posted by richat 26 January | 12:33

iconomy, the cats are looking at me funny again.

posted by deborah 26 January | 12:41

I like how he looks like he's ready to vomit. Bee vomit = honey!

posted by iconomy 26 January | 12:45

I sent a test message to my wife and it did in fact work. Cool.

posted by terrapin 26 January | 13:12

That's awesome! Has he eaten too many grapes or what?

Bee is for Bacchus?

posted by Hugh Janus 26 January | 13:16

Iconomy, you're KILLIN me with that!

You just know that Angelina Jollie is going to want to adopt a honey-vomitting asian bee baby. It's totally the next Hollywood trend.

posted by jrossi4r 26 January | 14:46

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