Gmail oddity
 

I have a gmail account, and I love it. Very widely accessible, uncluttered interface, free, generous capacity, etc. I use it for my main non-work account. But that doesn't mean I don't use it at work. Often I need a different perspective on our in house email system, and this very neatly fills that need. The other day, I received a message addressed to my gmail account, which I monitor with my Outlook 2003 client (mostly, sometimes I use the web interface), and I noticed something strange.

My gmail address is Big.V at gmail dot com, if my name were Big V. Normally that's the address that appears in the To: field when I check those messages. But this slightly different address turned up: BigV at gmail dot com. Weird. So, after some testing, I discovered that while the web login is very strict, allowing only Big.V and Big.V at gmail dot com as the login names, I was able to receive mail at that account addressed to Big.V and BigV and B.igV and B.i.g.V and all other similar permutations thereof. No examples where there were two or more dots in a row were successful. But the interior single dots (periods) seemed to be treated as just so much whitespace.

Has anyone else had this experience? Care to explain why? Why is the login strict but the addressing less so? I'm curious.

Yes. I don't know why.

I've received e-mail for another person who has the same last name. I receive e-mails for names that are similar to my user name but not exact. I have no idea why. I just delete them. Well, not the one that was for a person with my last name. I contacted her and sent her the picture that was sent to me inadvertantly. Very strange.

It's still Beta, right?

Just checked.

Still beta, yes.

I wonder if this is a known "undocumented feature"?

Some of this behavior is just how email is defined to work in the original specs. For example, it was agreed upon 15-20 years ago that you can freely add a plus sign and any other text to your address. So if you have account@gmail.com, account+smith@gmail.com will send mail to you. Or account+walmart, account+bankname, etc so some people are recommending the plus sign to track what emails are for what.

I don't remember the definition for how dots are supposed to work.

Many people have corporate addresses of their first name dot their last name @ work.com. That's because when you work at a corporation, they don't want you to have a handle-ish name like "undertoad". It's considered unprofessional.

I write the above paragraph because we will laugh so heartily at it in 20 years.

Occasionally Comcast puts mail in my box that has a different name, but the first 3 letters are the same. It's never anything important, usually borderline spam. :confused:
It's not a problem except I wonder where my mail is going. Is someone else getting some of mine?

Maybe you want to feedback to the gmail people about it...

Well, I just got returned mail (i.e. delivery failure) addressed to that account so maybe they are being picky now.

see pm

If, if, always the ifs...

As my brother in law is fond of saying: "...and if your aunt had balls, she'd be your uncle."
you see your pm

Looks like Gmail knows about this.

I just found that link when looking at some old e-mails I got and the strange address on one.

Brilliant, Sherlock! :deerstalker: :meerschaum: