Thought I'd share a problem I'm having with my GMail account... Recently I've been receiving emails from someone with the same name as me, who also has a GMail account but whose email address differs ever so very slightly to mine. Briefly, my GMail address is of the format
firstnamelastname@gmail.com whereas this other person's address is
firstname.lastname@gmail.com.
I received a few of his mails and then noticed that not all of them were using my email address (ie, the version without the dot between 1st and 2nd names) but were in fact using the other person's correct address. I've just spent a few minutes browsing the GMail help section to investigate this further and found
this message:
Quote:
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. For example, messages sent to GoogleAmy@gmail.com and Google.Amy@gmail.com are delivered to the same inbox.
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Followed by...
Quote:
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Please note that to log in to Gmail, you must enter any dots that were originally defined as part of your Gmail username.
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So, that explains why I'm getting emails about meeting up with people to play rugby tomorrow
It also means that, in my opinion, there's a fundamental flaw with the way Google are separating email addresses from login usernames. Assuming I know the address of someone I wish to impersonate, I can create a new account with a remarkably similar name that just has a dot somewhere in the name. I then change the Reply To address to match the address I'm impersonating, and I can email people whilst appearing to be someone else and yet still receive the replies (as opposed to simply spoofing the sender's address and not receiving any reply).
Does any of this make sense? Am I missing something (it is late and I need sleep!) or isn't this a big flaw with GMail?
ps - anyone interested in playing rugby with my new friends in London should drop me a PM
