Not a bug Valid Gmail addresses are currently blocked in they have three or more periods in the username part of the email address

bzcomputers

bzcomputers

Well-known member
Affected version
2.2.12
Gmail is odd in that this.is.a.valid.gmail.email.address@gmail.com

The bug comes when trying to register with this email address. Any email address with more than two periods in the username part will currently fail with the notice "The email address you entered has been banned by the administrator. Please try another." Which is confusing to Gmail users with more than 3 periods in the username part of their "valid" email address. The confusion is compounded by the error in itself not being very accurate in describing the actual email address issue being encountered.

The work around is Gmail basically ignores the periods anyway. So in practice (@Gmail) this address: this.is.a.valid.gmail.email.address@gmail.com is the same as this address: this.is.a.validgmailemailaddress@gmail.com is the same as this address: thisisavalidgmailemailaddress@gmail.com and they all go to the same inbox. Most Gmail users will not know this themselves and with the current error encountered would not likely figure it out either.

I'm not sure the best solution but there are a few options. The most user friendly is probably just to check all gmail.com domain addresses for periods in the username part of the email address and to just strip all periods from the username if there are more than 3.
 
This is something you have configured on your own site in the banned email addresses section in the ACP.

There are no email addresses blocked by default.
 
How many valid multi.dot gmail users you have? I know that spammers love to use dots like crazy, are there real people who do that too?
 
Alan_SP said:
How many valid multi.dot gmail users you have? I know that spammers love to use dots like crazy, are there real people who do that too?
Click to expand...

None until today, because they couldn't create an account. It might be nice to see the numbers from some other admins who didn't block them for a few years.

I just had one contact me earlier today that she couldn't create an account using her Gmail address (which had 3 dots). It's the first time I've been contacted about it. I had placed the block on 3+ dots 2 1/2 years ago and completely forgot about it. Not sure how many valid users I may have blocked over that time but I know when I placed the block there were tons of spammers using 3 or more dots and I'm sure that hasn't changed.

So I've currently removed the 3 dot block, but may add it back if it becomes an issue. Would be nice if specific domain could be excluded/whitelisted from an email ban but at this time XenForo does not have that option.
 
Alan_SP said:
How many valid multi.dot gmail users you have? I know that spammers love to use dots like crazy, are there real people who do that too?
Click to expand...
I have an email I use that has two in them.

I have found, however, that you can get usually around websites that don't allow periods by just leaving them out. As any email sent to your address with or without periods still delivers.
 
Yeah, that's what I mean. I've signed up for websites with the per.io.d@gmail address and am told the address is invalid. But removing the periods has let me bypass that so far everywhere I've tried it.
 
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