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Comment by wanderingmind | Hacker News Reader

The gmail dot problem is one of the biggest reasons for account failure and account faking across a wide range of websites and apps. They seem to have no bother fixing it.

On the other hand, it might be useful to start a new tag `Help HN:`, to get support from the bigtechs since this seems to truly be the last resort

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I agree! I have seen this happen to me years ago when Gmail debuted. But, this used to work - at least for Facebook. So, someone changed something at Facebook I guess - and decided to canonicalize the email. The other mystery of course is how the email set on my OG a/c just disappeared. It does not show up. Anyway, I will see what I can get done through official channels

P.S. I did start off with [Help HN] in the subject; but for some reason that was auto removed by HN. So `[Help HN] text` became just `text`. I eventually edited the subject to at least put in `Help` there.

I am sorry, I don‘t understand it, could you dumb it down?

Emails to John.Smith@gmail.com are sent to JohnSmith@gmail.com? The other way round?

If John.Smith@gmail.com exists, a new account for JohnSmith@gmail.com can‘t be made?

Gmail ignores dots, the actual account is johnsmith@google.com and everything else is just aliases.

bizarre

I'm not sure how that could even be an issue. You need access to the gmail account to confirm the email either way. The only possible issue I can imagine is a poorly built site assuming that all email servers do this and ignoring dots in emails.

You are assuming that the said site has an email confirmation workflow as part of the registration process (Granted most do these days, but it wasn't the case many years earlier). Even so, you are also assuming that the said site would block your usage unless you confirm your email.

Assuming one John Smith creates an account as john.smith@gmail.com ; and then another John Smith happens to create an account as johnsmith@gmail.com - and doesn't confirm the email right away (either the site doesn't ask for it; or doesn't really block any functionality - just keeps showing an annoying warning message). First John Smith can now easily take over the second account by triggering a forgot password workflow - for shit and giggles.

One of these users doesn't own the email address they have input. If it's the first one, I'm not sure how they could trigger a password reset without access, if its the second one, then I'm not sure why it's surprising you can have your account reset when you signup with someone elses email.

Johnsmith@gmail.com can be any combination of j.h.o.h.s.m.i.t.h@googlemail.com

https://lifehacker.com/your-gmail-account-has-unlimited-addr...

For the sake of clarity: any combination of j.o.h.n.s.m.i.t.h@googlemail.com.

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