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Wow! I didn't know Gmail did that! (handles extra "." and "+" characters

2908 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  hugh
Wow! I didn't know Gmail did that! (handles extra "." and "+" characters

One day I gave out my gmail address to someone. However I incorrectly used my work email name but used the gmail domain name. They only differed by a single character (a dot) but to my amazement Gmail faithfully sent the message. So go ahead and try it.

Here is the official blurb from Google.

Your address is similar but has more or fewer dots (.) or different capitalization.

Sometimes you may receive a message sent to an address that looks like yours but has a different number or arrangement of periods. While we know it might be unnerving if you think someone else's mail is being routed to your account, don't worry: both of these addresses are yours.

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. In short:

[email protected] = [email protected]
[email protected] = [email protected]
[email protected] = [email protected]
All these addresses belong to the same person. You can see this if you try to sign in with your username, but adding or removing a dot from it. You'll still go to your account.
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Note that while the + character is absolutely legal in email addresses there are lots of mail filters out there that won't let it pass.
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