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I know that in gmail if you have an address such as some.example@gmail.com, you can send something to someexample@gmail.com (without the period or dot) and gmail considers it to be the same account.

In particular, I want to know if the same holds true for @yahoo.com email addresses. Answers to other popular services would be helpful to include in the answer.

(While this isn't a "How do I..." programming question, it's valuable domain information relevant to the broader task of programming. For instance if you're using emails as a key for dup prevention, it's helpful to know that someexample@gmail.com and some.example@gmail.com are duplicates.)

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I hate to have my questions migrated. Response is SO much slower. – Larsenal Jun 25 '10 at 19:04
if something doesn't belong on StackOverflow, why ask it on StackOverflow, knowing that it will be eventually migrated? If you think SuperUser is slow, why don't you try recruiting some people to help the SuperUser community? – squircle Jun 25 '10 at 23:45
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Larsenal, next time phrase this as an algorithmic email validation question, ask about "equivalent" email address parsing. Keep it to programming, don't emphasize how it's off-topic--the hounds will pounce on those. – artlung Jun 26 '10 at 14:59
This shouldn't have been migrated in the first place... – Ivo Flipse♦ Jun 26 '10 at 18:19
Thanks for the comments. Good idea, artlung. – Larsenal Jun 28 '10 at 17:25
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migrated from stackoverflow.com Jun 25 '10 at 18:54

This question came from our site for professional and enthusiast programmers.

closed as off topic by Mehper C. Palavuzlar, Ivo Flipse♦ Jun 26 '10 at 18:19

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2 Answers

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Any valid characters prior to the @ make up a unique Email address (per domain). Thus, the@ t.he@ th.e@ and t.h.e@ are all unique email addresses. Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo all regard these as unique email addresses with unique mailboxes.

How the server handles them on the backend, that would be a different story. Obviously someone with an email server could point all those at the same mailbox, but there is no way to programmatically determine that from the "outside".

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In practice Google does not treat them as unique. I'm not saying there's a programmatic way to determine what they do... but if we know what they do I can build that into my app to handle these situations gracefully. – Larsenal Jun 25 '10 at 18:54
In practice, you are wrong. Google treats them all as unique addresses. – Russ Warren Jun 25 '10 at 21:58
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Apparently google has changed it's practice from when it originally opened. Google has decided to reduce the chances of someone spoofing an email address based on adding a period. However, the RFC for SMTP still states that a period makes up part of a unique email address (tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322). – Erik Philips Jun 26 '10 at 3:16
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For gmail example@gmail.com is the same as ex.ample@gmail.com. lifehacker.com/269619/reformat-your-gmail-address-with-dots – artlung Jun 26 '10 at 15:00
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Yahoo treats them as separate accounts.

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