Identity Crisis
#tags errors,email
<div style="margin-left: 3em; font-size: 0.8em; font-style: italic;">
This error was revealed and written up by <a
href="http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel/">Karl Fogel</a>.
</div>
Today I received an email from a hotel, confirming a reservation for a
room. But it wasn't meant for me; it was meant for "Kathy Fogel" (whom
I've never met), and was sent to "k.fogel@gmail.com".
Now, I do have the account "kfogel@gmail.com", but I'd never received
email for "k.fogel" before. As I'd always thought "." was a significant
character in email addresses, I didn't see how I could have gotten this
mail. It turns out, though, that Google ignores "." when it's in the
username portion of a gmail address. My friend Brian Fitzpatrick knew
this already, and pointed me to [Google's
explanation](http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=%67mail&hl=en&answer=10313).
Apparently used by some for filter, the error revealed this feature. It
seems, my experience and alarm was [not
unique](http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060120-6022.html).
I called the hotel, and eventually managed to make them understand that
I had no idea who Kathy Fogel was, and that I'd accidentally gotten an
email intended for her. They said they'd resend, and of course I said
"Wait, no, it'll just come to me again!" But they swore they had a
different email address on file for her, and indeed, I haven't gotten a
second email.
Which raises another question: how did they send the mail to
"k.fogel@gmail.com" in the first place? Clearly, Kathy Fogel cannot
have that address, because Google will not allow any other "dot
variants" of an address to be registered after the first. (Besides,
if she did have that address, we'd be getting each other's mail all
the time, and we're not.) It's also unlikely that she mistakenly
given them that address herself, since they already had another
address in place by the time I called.
A computer wouldn't substitute domain names in an email address like
that. The only thing I can think of is that somehow, humans are, at
least in some cases, intimately involved in sending out confirmation
emails from DoubleTree hotels. I say "intimately" because this was no
mere cut-and-paste mistake. Someone had to transcribe an email
address by hand, and accidentally put "gmail.com" where the original
said "yahoo.com" or "aol.com" or whatever.
I hope Kathy has a nice trip.