Tell me more ×
Web Applications Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for power users of web applications. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 5 down vote favorite

I'm an old gmail user from 2004 and I've always been curious about it.

Registering john.doe@gmail.com as a new gmail account, is doe.john@gmail automatically reserved?

If I try to send a mail to doe.john@gmail, the mail does not arrive to me and I don't get any Mail Delivery Subsystem warning so it seems the address is alive in some way.

share|improve this question

1 Answer

up vote 6 down vote accepted

If you registered the account john.doe@gmail.com then you aren't going to get emails addressed to doe.john@gmail.com as that would be a totally different account.

I tested this with my own Gmail account and I get bounce back saying the account doesn't exist. You probably didn't get a bounce back because the account (doe.john@gmail.com) does exist - it must have been registered by someone else.

share|improve this answer
that's strange though; in 7 years I have never received a mail sent by any friend/parents/whatever of doe.john@gmail.com using john.doe@gmail.com as address. I mean, it's pretty easy to make a mistake and invert name and surname; I did it many times. – systempuntoout Jul 20 '11 at 8:55
1  
@systempuntoout dont forget that the . is an optional in the email and can be placed anywhere so it would result in the taking up of a lot of variation per registered email – Matt Jul 20 '11 at 9:06
it is optional, but the most classic place is between name and surname or viceversa. – systempuntoout Jul 20 '11 at 9:40
3  
By giving your email as john.doe@gmail.com. The most common mistake would be miss out or to misplace the . Swapping around the first and last name wouldn't be a common mistake, IMO. – Barry♦ Jul 20 '11 at 9:45
@Barry uhm, probably I see it as a common mistake because, unluckily, my mail at work is doe.john@work.com . So, sometimes a friend swaps name and surname by mistake OR I directly give him/her swapped :P – systempuntoout Jul 20 '11 at 10:24

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.