Most of us these days have Gmail addresses. And some of us have Gmail addresses with a full stop in them. Like ah.boon@gmail.com. But unlike other email servers, you can still receive your email even if your sender forgets to include the dot in ah.boon – because, as it turns out, it really isn’t necessary.
Everyone knows that if you had an email address like ah.boon@campus.sg and you sent it to ahboon@campus.sg, it would bounce. However, when Google created Gmail, they decided to do things differently – by ignoring the full stops in its users’ emails entirely.
Not only do you not need a full stop, you can actually add them anywhere else in your email address and it won’t make a difference. It’ll serve to make the address easier to remember, however. You’re more likely to remember Ah.Boon@gmail.com than ahboon@gmail.com.
So even if you’ve registered your email as ah.boon@gmail.com, someone can just email you with these addresses like these: ahboon@gmail.com ; a.h.b.o.o.n@gmail.com ; ahboo.n@gmail.com
But not all email providers will ignore the dots – which could be the reason why some of us receive emails that belong to someone else with the same name. Here’s a list where dots do and don’t matter:
DOTS MATTER: Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo Mail, Apple iCloud
DOTS DON’T MATTER: Gmail, Facebook
DOTS STRICTLY PROHIBITED: Twitter
