Email but not Eudora

[micky]

Email but not Eudora

My nephew finally gave me his email address, and it is

***@gmail.com

where those are his first , mddle, and last names, and there is a dot
between the first and second, but no dot before the last.

I thought that's what he said but figured the connection from South
America was bad and I put in the extra dot.

And he got the email anyhow, promptly Because he replied to me
promptly and his from: address didn't have the second dot.

I used to know a little about the part of the local part beyond the dot,
but I never knew much and what I knew has dissolved.

Can you explain what happened and/or tell me the nomenclature for this
so I can google.


(middlelast looks a lot like middleast, middle east, doesn't it.)

[danny burstein]

Post by micky
Email but not Eudora
My nephew finally gave me his email address, and it is
where those are his first , mddle, and last names, and there is a dot
between the first and second, but no dot before the last.
I thought that's what he said but figured the connection from South
America was bad and I put in the extra dot.
And he got the email anyhow, promptly Because he replied to me
promptly and his from: address didn't have the second dot.

the "gmail" e-mail server is pretty lenient about whether
and where you put the periods. So, "first.middle.last" will
often work, as will "firstmiddle.last", and even "first.mid.dle.last".

About five years ago I read an explanation as to why
they set it up this way, but damn if I remember...

[Ajo Wissink]

On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 06:15:36 +0000 (UTC), danny burstein

Post by danny burstein

Post by micky
Email but not Eudora
My nephew finally gave me his email address, and it is
where those are his first , mddle, and last names, and there is a dot
between the first and second, but no dot before the last.
I thought that's what he said but figured the connection from South
America was bad and I put in the extra dot.
And he got the email anyhow, promptly Because he replied to me
promptly and his from: address didn't have the second dot.

the "gmail" e-mail server is pretty lenient about whether
and where you put the periods. So, "first.middle.last" will
often work, as will "firstmiddle.last", and even "first.mid.dle.last".
About five years ago I read an explanation as to why
they set it up this way, but damn if I remember...

It is even more than "pretty lenient".
You can put a period between all the characters and it will still
work.

[Rick C]

Post by Ajo Wissink
On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 06:15:36 +0000 (UTC), danny burstein

Post by danny burstein

Post by micky
Email but not Eudora
My nephew finally gave me his email address, and it is
where those are his first , mddle, and last names, and there is a dot
between the first and second, but no dot before the last.
I thought that's what he said but figured the connection from South
America was bad and I put in the extra dot.
And he got the email anyhow, promptly Because he replied to me
promptly and his from: address didn't have the second dot.

the "gmail" e-mail server is pretty lenient about whether
and where you put the periods. So, "first.middle.last" will
often work, as will "firstmiddle.last", and even "first.mid.dle.last".
About five years ago I read an explanation as to why
they set it up this way, but damn if I remember...

It is even more than "pretty lenient".
You can put a period between all the characters and it will still
work.

Ok, so periods are ignored. Does it do this with other characters like underscore or dashes?

[Ajo Wissink]

On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 11:51:10 -0700 (PDT), Rick C

Post by Rick C

Post by Ajo Wissink
On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 06:15:36 +0000 (UTC), danny burstein

Post by danny burstein

Post by micky
Email but not Eudora
My nephew finally gave me his email address, and it is
where those are his first , mddle, and last names, and there is a dot
between the first and second, but no dot before the last.
I thought that's what he said but figured the connection from South
America was bad and I put in the extra dot.
And he got the email anyhow, promptly Because he replied to me
promptly and his from: address didn't have the second dot.

the "gmail" e-mail server is pretty lenient about whether
and where you put the periods. So, "first.middle.last" will
often work, as will "firstmiddle.last", and even "first.mid.dle.last".
About five years ago I read an explanation as to why
they set it up this way, but damn if I remember...

It is even more than "pretty lenient".
You can put a period between all the characters and it will still
work.

Ok, so periods are ignored. Does it do this with other characters like underscore or dashes?

I tried the dashes, but that didn't work: "Undelivered Mail Returned
to Sender".

I don't mind the period thing, but I am experiencing a very serious
gmail flaw. One of my gmail accounts is "a" followed by a (fictive)
family name. I registered that many years ago when you needed an
invitation to be able to register. I very often get mail addressed to
unknown people who also are using that same address. Google has seen
fit to allow many other people to register under that name. After a
while I became curious to see how often it happened and created a
mailbox for this misdirected mail. The count is now 216.
This happens only with the address that contains only the "a" in the
first part. It never happens when there are multiple characters in the
first part. So, for example, "m. mouse" would not be safe, but
"mickey.mouse" is OK.

YMMV

[welkinator]

On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 11:51:10 -0700 (PDT), Rick C

Post by Rick C

Post by Ajo Wissink
On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 06:15:36 +0000 (UTC), danny burstein

Post by danny burstein

Post by micky
Email but not Eudora
My nephew finally gave me his email address, and it is
where those are his first , mddle, and last names, and there is a dot
between the first and second, but no dot before the last.
I thought that's what he said but figured the connection from South
America was bad and I put in the extra dot.
And he got the email anyhow, promptly Because he replied to me
promptly and his from: address didn't have the second dot.

the "gmail" e-mail server is pretty lenient about whether
and where you put the periods. So, "first.middle.last" will
often work, as will "firstmiddle.last", and even "first.mid.dle.last".
About five years ago I read an explanation as to why
they set it up this way, but damn if I remember...

It is even more than "pretty lenient".
You can put a period between all the characters and it will still
work.

Ok, so periods are ignored. Does it do this with other characters like underscore or dashes?

For years I have used a format that included a plus sign (+) to
identify who is selling my addy. In this form:
my.actual.addy+amazon.gmail.com

If I subsequently get spam with that extra +amazon then I pretty well
know that amazon sold me out. (Actually, Amazon didn't - but
others...?)

[welkinator]

On Sun, 04 Jul 2021 08:15:26 -0500, welkinator

Post by Ajo Wissink
On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 11:51:10 -0700 (PDT), Rick C

Post by Rick C

Post by Ajo Wissink
On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 06:15:36 +0000 (UTC), danny burstein

Post by danny burstein

Post by micky
Email but not Eudora
My nephew finally gave me his email address, and it is
where those are his first , mddle, and last names, and there is a dot
between the first and second, but no dot before the last.
I thought that's what he said but figured the connection from South
America was bad and I put in the extra dot.
And he got the email anyhow, promptly Because he replied to me
promptly and his from: address didn't have the second dot.

the "gmail" e-mail server is pretty lenient about whether
and where you put the periods. So, "first.middle.last" will
often work, as will "firstmiddle.last", and even "first.mid.dle.last".
About five years ago I read an explanation as to why
they set it up this way, but damn if I remember...

It is even more than "pretty lenient".
You can put a period between all the characters and it will still
work.

Ok, so periods are ignored. Does it do this with other characters like underscore or dashes?

For years I have used a format that included a plus sign (+) to
my.actual.addy+amazon.gmail.com
If I subsequently get spam with that extra +amazon then I pretty well
know that amazon sold me out. (Actually, Amazon didn't - but
others...?)

Arrrggghhh >> my.actual.addy+***@gmail.com << of course!

[[e-mail]]

Post by welkinator
On Sun, 04 Jul 2021 08:15:26 -0500, welkinator

Post by Ajo Wissink
On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 11:51:10 -0700 (PDT), Rick C

Post by Ajo Wissink
On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 06:15:36 +0000 (UTC), danny burstein

Post by danny burstein

Post by micky
Email but not Eudora
My nephew finally gave me his email address, and it is
where those are his first , mddle, and last names, and there is a dot
between the first and second, but no dot before the last.
I thought that's what he said but figured the connection from South
America was bad and I put in the extra dot.
And he got the email anyhow, promptly Because he replied to me
promptly and his from: address didn't have the second dot.

the "gmail" e-mail server is pretty lenient about whether
and where you put the periods. So, "first.middle.last" will
often work, as will "firstmiddle.last", and even "first.mid.dle.last".
About five years ago I read an explanation as to why
they set it up this way, but damn if I remember...

It is even more than "pretty lenient".
You can put a period between all the characters and it will still
work.

Ok, so periods are ignored. Does it do this with other characters like underscore or dashes?

For years I have used a format that included a plus sign (+) to
my.actual.addy+amazon.gmail.com
If I subsequently get spam with that extra +amazon then I pretty well
know that amazon sold me out. (Actually, Amazon didn't - but
others...?)

Google groups is very odd about email addresses in the message. They hide them supposedly requiring a click and some sort of human detection to see the actual address. But for some time now this has been dysfunctional. Just now it opened a captcha with nothing else on the entire page. Clicking it does nothing. But I get the idea. The dot after amazon should have been an @ no doubt.

So the plus sign and everything after is ignored? Wow!! I just did a test and that works for my domain arius.com email addresses as well. Maybe I can skip the hundreds of web site specific email addresses? No, not really. By giving everyone distinct addresses I can shut off any one offender. I have a few addresses I have done that with when the spam got out of control.

Still, I don't recall ever hearing about this. I wonder if there are any email entry forms that don't allow the plus sign?

[Sid Elbow]

Post by danny burstein
the "gmail" e-mail server is pretty lenient about whether
and where you put the periods. So, "first.middle.last" will
often work, as will "firstmiddle.last", and even "first.mid.dle.last".

I have one gmail address of the form: ***@gmail.com

I tried:

***@gmail.com - worked
***@gmail.com -didn't work (no bounce message)
***@gmail.com - didn't work (generated "doesn't exist message)

I'll continue testing.

Post by danny burstein
About five years ago I read an explanation as to why
they set it up this way, but damn if I remember...

My recollection (which could be wrong at my age) is that it was intended
to assist the user in separating messages of various types/sources since
"modern" email clients don't do a vary good job of that.

Older clients - well Eudora particularly - have such a powerful
filtering capacity that it's pretty well superfluous in that case.

(Incidentally I don't agree that this is OT for a Eudora group. It may
have implications for setting up Eudora personality groups)

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

If that IS what you entered -- there is no "r", so it is a different
name from the previous line. You might have sent junk to a different user.

[Ajo Wissink]

Post by Sid Elbow
I'll continue testing.

The username should have the same digits and characters as in
***@gmail.com so it's logical that 2 and 3 don't work.

[Grant Taylor]

Post by micky
Can you explain what happened and/or tell me the nomenclature for
this so I can google.

Google is ignoring dots / periods / full stops in the local part of
email addresses /in/ /their/ /domain/ (gmail.com).

I don't know if this is violating any sort of standard. It is /their/
local part and they can treat it however they want to. They just can't
do it to anybody else's local part.

[Piet]

Post by Grant Taylor
Google is ignoring dots / periods / full stops in the local part of
email addresses /in/ /their/ /domain/ (gmail.com).
I don't know if this is violating any sort of standard. It is /their/
local part and they can treat it however they want to.

Correct.
A local part must be syntactically correct, but the interpretation and
processing is entirely up to the domain part's final/local delivery.

A typical case is a '+' in the local part. Some final destinations treat
"joe+anne" as an alias for one mailbox, some treat it as to be delivered
to the mailboxes "joe" and "anne". And there are still zillions of sites
giving an "invalid address" error message on such an e-mail address.

-p