Sat, 23 Sep 2006
Gmail Feature or Design Flaw
Accidentally I noticed a serious problem with Gmail. I sent a mail to
my Gmail account from my official mail id while checking the mail
forwarding feature. My Gmail id looks like
firstnamelastname@gmail.com. But my mistake I put a dot between my
firstname and lastname. So I sent the mail to
firstname.lastname@gmail.com and there is no such id as far as I
know. Surprisingly the mail got delivered to
firstnamelastname@gmail.com. I checked it 2,3 times and confirmed that
it really works. Gmail automatically forward
firstname.lastname@gmail.com to firstnamelastname@gmail.com since the
former id does not exist or it assumes something else. But when I try
to login to either gmail or gtalk using firstname.lastname@gmail.com,
it complains that there is no such user. But only mail sent to this id
works fine. Is it a feature or a design flaw? What happens if suppose
there are two different persons, one having
firstnamelastname@gmail.com and another with
firstname.secondname@gmail.com? The mail sent to one guy will be
forwarded to the other guy. I could not check if Gmail has any
mechanism that prevents two users with same first and lastname to have
two different mail ids but only with a dot difference. But if Gmail
thinks it is a feature, it gives to its users, then they should also
allow login to their services with and without a dot so that it
eliminates redundant email creation and privacy issues.
When I carefully examined the mail I received with a dot separating
firstname and lastname, Gmail has explained how the email id is being
read by Gmail. Gmail don't care about dot (.) in the gmail user
name. Even if someone send a mail like
f.i.r.s.t.n.a.m.e.last.name@gmail.com, it will work, it seems. But it
won't allow the user to sign into his account like this
[/work]
permanent link
