Gmail addresses are not unique

[wdfifteen]

There is a person with the same first and last names as me and with the same gmail address.
I found out when an acquaintance sent an email to my wife and copied me on it. I never got the email. The other Patrick did, and responded to “all.” Mrs WD came to me, perplexed, and asked why I responded in French, when I don’t even speak French.
I responded a kind of “WTF?” Email back to him. He responded, this time in English. Turns out the guy is a photographer working in Africa. We traded web site addresses and he is a legit professional photographer with my name and my gmail address. He was born in Straussburg which is 80km from Neuburg, the town my family came from - we may be related.
I have no idea how or why an email sent to me got delivered to a French guy in Africa, or why two people from Alsace were given the same Irish name.

[SeanPizzle]

I find it hard to believe that you have the EXACT same address. No hyphens or underscores? When you chose your Gmail address, they look for same addresses already in use

[rattlsnak]

yeah, that shouldnt happen...

[wdfifteen]

Maybe some hidden character or something? I don’t know, looking at the addresses on the screen they look the same.

[HardDrive]

They are not the same, and someone is trying to mine personal information about you. Tell them nothing. This is a phishing attempt.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by HardDrive

They are not the same, and someone is trying to mine personal information about you. Tell them nothing. This is a phishing attempt.

If so he isn’t very persistent. He wrote to me once, over a year ago.

[Bill Douglas]

Ah, the luck of the Irish. Imagine that, someone to get all your spam.

[stomachmonkey]

Gmail does not recognize periods although IIRC way back in the day it may have allowed my.name@gmail.com and myname@gmail.com to register accounts individually.

Used to be a way for hackers to steal accounts as mail sent to m.y.n.a.m.e@gmail.com will go to myname@gmail.com

[motion]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Gmail does not recognize periods although IIRC way back in the day it may have allowed my.name@gmail.com and myname@gmail.com to register accounts individually.

Used to be a way for hackers to steal accounts as mail sent to m.y.n.a.m.e@gmail.com will go to myname@gmail.com

I didn't know that!!!!

I've been using my address as lastname.firstname@gmail.com for all these years without knowing that!

[KFC911]

At the binary level, there must be a difference between the two....it might not even be an intrepretable character for us maroons to see however...just a WAG

[kach22i]

Well, this is an odd story.

First I've heard of it.

Thanks for sharing.

[svandamme]

They cannot be identical, else both of you would get all of both y'all emails.

It's a technical impossibility to thave the same adress between 2 people and not see all emails sent to both. At least not on the internet with SMTP routing.

It would take seperate networks, like in a company network that does not route to the outside world.. but that is a thing of the past these days.

All allowed addressing characters and their use are described in

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822

But in any case

Stijn.vandamme@domain.com

stijnvandamme@domain.com

stijn vandamme@domain.com < Not allowed
"stijn vandamme"@domain.com > ALLOWED
Stijn..vandamme@domain.com < Not allowed
"Stijn..vandamme"@domain.com > ALLOWED


But, only a stupid Admin will allow spaces and other weird sjit on his server because it can only cause problems and confusion down the line
Even the forum get's all annoyed and tries to add "email" tags and then fails on the spaces

Note, none of it is caps sensitive
so
STIJNVANDAMME@domain.com
is exactly the same as
stijnvandamme@domain.com
or
StIjNvAnDaMmE@domain.com

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Used to be a way for hackers to steal accounts as mail sent to m.y.n.a.m.e@gmail.com will go to myname@gmail.com

Then Gmail was not complying to the RFC.. But i fail to see how there is a security problem with that.
IF Gmail consistently ignores the dot and does not allow it in the creation of the account
Then no accounts will have a dot.

So if at that point somebody sends an email, and adds a dot... And Gmail parses the dot out, to end up with the non dot version.
Why would there be a problem?

Any email to stijn.vandamme@gmail.com would end up in the stijnvandamme@gmail.com mailbox
and when the user replies, it will be from stijnvandamme@gmail.com since gmail doesn't do dots.

How would a hacker in that way get access to the account? the password is still there.
You can't login to the mailbox without it.

The only way I can see an issue, if at some point they did allow a . in the adress but not in their routing.
Which would be a bit of a split brain problem and then you supposedly could get the mails to change routing, if the target has a dot, and you slip in with the same adress without a dot.

But that sounds a bit rich to me.. It would be epic retard level at Gmail if they did that.

[Paul_Heery]

Originally Posted by motion

I didn't know that!!!!

I've been using my address as lastname.firstname@gmail.com for all these years without knowing that!

This has been known for a long time. There are a lot of ways that you can manipulate a gmail address. Here is a Google blog post from 2008 that provides some of the ways this can be done.
https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from-your.html

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by svandamme

.......

Why would there be a problem?

Any email to stijn.vandamme@gmail.com would end up in the stijnvandamme@gmail.com mailbox
and when the user replies, it will be from stijnvandamme@gmail.com since gmail doesn't do dots.

How would a hacker in that way get access to the account? the password is still there.
You can't login to the mailbox without it.

The only way I can see an issue, if at some point they did allow a . in the adress but not in their routing.
Which would be a bit of a split brain problem and then you supposedly could get the mails to change routing, if the target has a dot, and you slip in with the same adress without a dot.

IIRC the issue was usernames, they allowed it on account creation so your.name and yourname were seen as unique accounts.

And the issue was not getting access to gmail, it was every account / service you used that gmail address with.

We all know email address lists get stolen 24/7.

So parse the list for any gmail addresses containing names with periods.

Now create a new account without the period and you will get the original accounts mail.

Forgot your username, we’ll send it to your email on file.

Forgot your password, we’ll send a reset link to your email on file.

These days when you try to create a new gmail address with a period in it gmail actually pops up text in red that says someone already has that username and that gmail ignores periods.

I would not bother googling that **** up because, well, gmail is google, as we know.

But trust me, this was a thing.

[Reddy Kilowatt]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

There is a person with the same first and last names as me and with the same gmail address.
I found out when an acquaintance sent an email to my wife and copied me on it. I never got the email. The other Patrick did, and responded to “all.” Mrs WD came to me, perplexed, and asked why I responded in French, when I don’t even speak French.
I responded a kind of “WTF?” Email back to him. He responded, this time in English. Turns out the guy is a photographer working in Africa. We traded web site addresses and he is a legit professional photographer with my name and my gmail address. He was born in Straussburg which is 80km from Neuburg, the town my family came from - we may be related.
I have no idea how or why an email sent to me got delivered to a French guy in Africa, or why two people from Alsace were given the same Irish name.

So do you think there's just some sort of randomizer machine that decides which of you got this email sent to your identical addresses? As described by svandamme, you certainly do NOT have the same address.

[svandamme]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

But trust me, this was a thing.

well like i said , epic retard levels then.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Reddy Kilowatt

So do you think there's just some sort of randomizer machine that decides which of you got this email sent to your identical addresses? As described by svandamme, you certainly do NOT have the same address.

All I know is what happened. When you look at the addresses they look the same. This one time he got an email meant for me. I’ve never gotten one meant for him. I have no idea what goes on behind the computer screen. Maybe one of the squirrels (or is it monkeys?) flipped the wrong switch that time.

[ckelly78z]

Is he your unknown doppleganger, long lost unmentioned, twin brother, brother from another mother ?

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

...(or is it monkeys?) flipped the wrong switch that time.

Leave me out of this.

[wdfifteen]

So it was you!