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Comment by abdj8 | Hacker News Reader

Two bad experiences with Uber support - I don't use them unless there is no other option. I have an Uber account with my email id(gmail) with a '.' in it. It so happened that someone else created a driver account with the same email-id without the '.' in it. I am not sure how that account got verified by Uber, I never clicked any link to verify that account. So I keep getting emails of that driver's account, tried talking to an Uber support person, they don't understand the problem with '.' and simply shut me out saying if this is not your account we are not talking to you about it.

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I get this ALL. THE. TIME.

I usually take over & lock / delete the account or alert their fraud department, along with the Google Answers link about how the dots work.

LinkedIn scraper spam without the dot? "Hi thanks for wanting to hire me, I don't reward scrapers"

Ironically enough I didn't put in this dot-removal logic in the app I maintain at work. For one, it makes creating test accounts really easy - the second is that most of our customers have their own domain, so @gmail is very rare.

I've had something like this with a Spanish-language Netflix account. Kept getting email in Spanish for it. Tried contacting Netflix in lots of ways, and nothing worked. Eventually, I used a password reset to take control of the account and just disabled it. I assume whoever created the account didn't have access to it.

Can't you just reset the password on account without the dot it in? Lock them out.

That's true, but that's really on google.

anecdote:

I got an email one day to me (first and last name) for the receipt of a small medical purchase that definitely wasn't mine. At first I thought was getting scammed.

Then I realized, the only thing that was correct was my first and last name. Address, last 4 of PAN, state, everything was incorrect.

Upon opening the eml directly I realized it was actually sent to firstnamelastname@gmail.com, whereas my email address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com (note the period).

Did some googling, there was in fact someone with my first and last name in the area of the address.

I called the phone number given, it was indeed a man with the same first and last name. Explained what happened and forwarded the email.

So while, yes, Uber absolutely should be doing better, so should google.

I'm guessing someone is going to tell me that's correct behavior according to the spec, and if so, the spec is wrong, full stop. Those are not the same email addresses.

But, they are the same, because google treats them as the same?

Are you saying that there is someone registered with exactly the same account name on gmail, except with an added period?

yes, I can't speak to the specific algorithm google uses for account lookup, but if an email comes in for firstnamelastname@gmail.com and it doesn't exist but firstname.lastname@gmail.com DOES exist, google will send it to that mailbox.

Yes, but google also prevents someone with registering an account with the same name, and ignores periods when doing that check. But your post implied that they actually had the same email address, with the periods stripped?

So, it seems likely the other person still wrote their email address down wrong - but it wasn’t the periods that they got wrong. If this is the case, then I can’t see how there is anything google could do to fix this situation.

FWIW I have <first initial><surname>@gmail.com and get loads of email intended for <first initial><their middle initial><surname>@gmail.com, apparently they just keep writing it wrong.

The service that sent that receipt was one of those 3rd party services for small vendors. You go to a bakery and they are able to magically email you a receipt, that sort of thing.

So I very much doubt the person put their email in incorrectly, but I understand your point.

The exact mechanics of how it happened I don't know, but I very much disagree with firstname.lastname@gmail.com and firstnamelastname@gmail.com resolving to the same address.

the "algorithm" in this case is very simple. Periods are stripped entirely.

m.y.n.a.m.e@gmail.com and myname@gmail.com and my.name@gmail.com all canonicalize to the same account.

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