Thursday, April 27, 2006

a case of mistaken identity

oh gmail ... oh gmail

so i have found it quite interesting that i tend to get a lot of mail for other ppl in my gmail account. for mike or for mildred or matt or martha ... (my gmail account is m.lastname@gmail.com) ... among these, was a flyer for some junkmail ... so i tried to unsubscribe. i put in my email address and it told me that it didn't even have me on record (it's apparently impossible to remove someone from a list when they're not on the list to begin with). this lead me to be a bit more of a detective.

i looked at the address that the email had been sent to - it was just mlastname@gmail.com ... no dot. i found this puzzling - the dot is the defining feature of my gmail address! it's cute, it's perky and it separates my first initial from my last! this lead me to go and look at other emails that i had received for other ppl ... again, the email address entered was just mlastname@gmail.com. (weird) there was a little link to "learn more" ... so being the curiouscat that i am, i double clicked. oh how i learned!

APPARENTLY, gmail does not recognize dots. it recognizes yourname@gmail.com the same as your.name@gmail.com the same as y.o.u.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com . since when is a dot not a character? and does this mean that ALL my gmail has been going into someone else's inbox too? if there are two almost identical email sign-ins (aside from the dot) does the email get sent to all the accounts? or is it a random lottery to figure out who gets it each time? my two concerns are now that either i don't receive all emails that are sent to me ... or more distressing - all of the emails addressed to me are also being sent to mike (with the same email address as me). it makes me wonder ... i don't get *all* that many emails for mike (it is just usually mike that i get emails for) ... so either he's not a very popular guy, he doesn't use his gmail very much or i just randomly get sent some of his gmails.

i'm ever so confused.

do i change my email address? i was almost finally switched over from my hotmail to my gmail ... i almost had everyone trained! this is a definite oversight on google's part ... not necessarily the fact that the dot does not count as a character, but more in the fact that they did not really make it known/apparent that the dot did not count as a character when i signed up for this service 2 years ago!

oh i'm bitter - bitter and distressed (although, the distress is more a product of oliver being in critical care- but that's a story for another time. i don't want to assume the worst, until that assumption has been confirmed. p.s. just so you don't get overly worried, oliver is my laptop - but again, more on that later).

p.s. after some light tapping, jiggling and other good love, oliver has turned on again! YAY! but ... for how long?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That IS distressing and I'm surprised they've gotten away with that.

Here through Nico and Robs...enjoy reading your blogs. :)