Gmail Addresses Ignore Dots

This is interesting. I keep getting emails from a group of people that have mistakenly entered my email address in their CC field. When I look at it though, it is not my address, it is missing the period in between my first and last name. When I was looking at this, I saw a link that said, oddly enough, “Yes, this is you.” Upon clicking the “Learn More” link I found this information:

gmail

Am I receiving someone else’s email?
Gmail doesn’t recognize dots (.) as characters within a username. This way, you can add and remove dots to your username for desired address variations. messages sent to your.username@gmail.com and y.o.u.r.u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com are delivered to the same inbox, since the characters in the username are the same.

Keep in mind that hyphens (-) and underscores (_) can’t be used in a Gmail address. Also, usernames are case insensitive, so it doesn’t matter if you enter upper case or lower case letters.

If you created your account with a dot in your username and you wish you hadn’t, you can change your ‘Reply-to address.’ To change your reply-to address:

1. Click ‘Settings’ at the top of any Gmail page.
2. Enter your username@gmail.com without a dot in the ‘Reply-to address’ field.
3. Click ‘Save Changes.’

When you log in to Gmail, you need to enter any dots that were originally defined as part of your username.

For some reason I thought that when I initially signed up for gmail that dustindavis was taken so I selected dustin.davis. I guess dustin.davis just looked better to me.

[tags]gmail[/tags]

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October 17, 2006   Posted in: Web Sites

3 Responses

  1. Mixmax from gmail - August 3, 2009

    i didn’t know that until i read your post. Thanks for the info. Cheers.

  2. Sushant - August 18, 2009

    I am facing similar problem. However still confused.

    Lets say my email is ” goodboy@gmail.com ”
    Someone is mailing to ” good.boy@gmail.com ” and the mail comes to my inbox.

    The emails “goodboy@gmail.com” and “good.boy@gmail.com” are completely different and are registered by two different people.
    So how does that mail comes to my inbox.

  3. Sushant - August 27, 2009

    I lastly got it all clear.
    Google ignores the dot(.) in an email.
    Like “desidudes@gmail.com and desi.dudes@gmail.com or d.e.s.i.d.u.d.e.s@gmail.com
    These all email addresses are same. So google offers you to choose a variety of email addresses just by adding dots(.) to it.

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