nanog mailing list archives

Re: GMail contact - misroute / security issue


From: Bacon Zombie <baconzombie () gmail com>
Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 19:20:56 +0200

This probably also effected German users.
On Sep 30, 2014 6:32 PM, "Alexander Harrowell" <a.harrowell () gmail com>
wrote:

Related oddness: if you're British and a GMail user, you either got a
gmail.com username before the lawsuit, or you got a googlemail.com
between the lawsuit and the point when Google and the owner of the
"gmail" trademark settled, or then you got a gmail.com again.

Google chose to alias googlemail.com and gmail.com addresses so as to
minimise the mess, but this doesn't stop people who have
googlemail.com entering gmail.com (or vice versa) when they set up an
account on www.somewebsi.te, because they are conditioned to use
gmail.com/googlemail.com interchangeably, and then being baffled as to
why firstname.lastname () googlemail com (or vice versa)/password1234
doesn't work, because googlemail==gmail and anyway my address is
really firstname.lastname () gmail com (or googlemail) - look, I get
email on it, it must be the right one :-)



On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 12:17 AM, Jeff Woolsey <jlw () jlw com> wrote:
On 09/29/14 10:06, Nicolai wrote:

Most likely reason: gmail is so common that someone mistypes
johnsmith () example com as johnsmith () gmail com, not paying attention to
what
they're doing. It happens.


More likely, I think, is that newbies think that email addresses already
exist for everyone on the planet at firstlast () gmail com, and they just
give
that when asked (maybe they think it's throwaway and never actually
expect
to get any email there).  I'm in the same boat.   It doesn't bother me
all
that much because gmail is not my primary mail service.  I use it to
store
big stuff that's clogging the mail service I do pay for.  In fact, it
can be
entertaining, as I get usernames and passwords for sites that this guy
signed up for.  He's also a poker player and has recently tried to
enroll at
an art college.  The latter I could reply to and explain that their
prospective student is an idiot and should not be accepted, but that's
what
will happen anyway if I don't say anything.

--
Jeff Woolsey {woolsey,jlw}@{jlw,jxh}.com first.last@{gmail,jlw}.com
Spum bad keming.
Nature abhors a straight antenna, a clean lens, and unused storage
capacity.
"Delete! Delete! OK!" -Dr. Bronner on disk space management
"Card sorting, Joel." -me, re Solitaire




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