Gmail doesn’t recognize dots as characters within usernames

One strange thing I’ve just discovered:

Because Gmail doesn’t recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address; they’ll all go to your inbox, and only yours.

This means thatif your Gmail account is something like name.surname@gmail.com, you will also receive mail addressed to namesurname@gmail.com or na.m.es.urn.a.m.e.@gmail.com!
Very interesting!!!

The whole article says:

Sometimes you may receive a message intended for someone whose address is similar to yours but has a different number or arrangement of periods. For example, your address might be homerjsimpson@gmail.com, but the message was sent to a Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com. While we know it might be unnerving if you think someone else’s mail is being routed to your account, this is actually caused by a simple misunderstanding. Here’s why:

Gmail allows only one registration for any given username. Once you sign up for a username, nobody else can sign up for the same username, regardless of whether it contains extra periods or capital letters; those usernames belong to you. If you created yourusername@gmail.com, no one can ever register your.username@gmail.com, or Your.user.name@gmail.com. Because Gmail doesn’t recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address; they’ll all go to your inbox, and only yours.

If you’re homerjsimpson@gmail.com, no one owns Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com, except for you. If you’re getting mail addressed to Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com, it’s likely that someone was trying to send a message to Homer.J.Sampson@gmail.com, or Homer.J.Simpson1@gmail.com, and made a mistake. You might even get messages from mailing lists or website registrations because the person who signed up for them accidentally provided your address. In these cases, we suggest contacting the original sender or website when possible to alert them to the mistake.

As an additional measure to keep your account safe, though, we require that when you sign in to your account, you use the same configuration of periods as you originally used when choosing your username. So if you signed up for yourusername@gmail.com, nobody would be able to sign in as your.user.name@gmail.com, with any password, ever.

One last thing: Google Apps does recognize dots. If you’d like to have a dot in your username, please ask your domain administrator to add your preferred username as a nickname.