Monday, June 10, 2013

GMAIL and Email Addresses

I’ve been using GMAIL much more frequently over the past year or so and so it is with interest that I read an article on the naming convention of GMAIL email addresses that I was not aware of.

In any other email system that I’ve dealt with, the DOT is considered an alphabetic character which can also be used to improve readability of the email address. An email address of DavidOshea@yahoo.com could be setup as David.O.Shea@yahoo.com which would be different from David.Oshea@yahoo.com.

Where GMAIL is different is that it ignores the dot and although you can create an email address such as David.Oshea@gmail.com, any email to David.O.Shea@gmail.com or DavideOshea@gmail.com would also receive these emails.

GMAIL acknowledges this and calls it a feature. However, it is important for those that are setting up their email addresses to be aware of this so that their email addresses are sufficiently unique enough.

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