You have more gmail addresses than you know

by Michael (michael@code4life.com)

Dots are allowed in most email services and they're a significant character. For example, taylor.is.great@code4life is a separate email from taylorisgreat@code4life.com.

But, Not For All Email Services

That's true for all email services I know, except for Google. myawesomeaddress@gmail.com and my.awesome.address@gmail.com are the same email address. Send an email to either address; it'll go to the same account. You don't even need to register both at gmail (you can't, thankfully).

The Problem

Is that a problem? Our site treats myawesomeaddress@gmail.com and my.awesome.address@gmail.com as different email addresses (based on our simple understanding of what makes an email unique). Two (or 200) separate users could register with the "same" email address. It kind of violates our basic requirement that each user have a unique email.

Back