Google sending you someone else's mails

All of you might have received a message at least once which are not intended to you. They would have been sent to some other IDs not yours but these IDs resemble yours with a different placement of dots. Like suppose if your email ID is atul.anand@gmail.com and then u might receive mails sent to atulanand@gmail.com or atula.nand@gmail.com.

Do not believe it? Even i did not. Check it out yourself. Login into your gmail account and send mails to IDs resembling yours with some different placements of dots or with some extra dots (in case you do not have dots in your mails). You will be surprised getting these mails back to you. So, whats going on?

Gmail allows only one registration for any given username. Once you sign up for a particular username, any dot or capitalization variations are made permanently unavailable for new registration. If you created yourusername@gmail.com, no one can ever register your.username@gmail.com, or Your.user.name@gmail.com. Furthermore, because Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, adding or removing dots from a Gmail address won't change the actual destination address. Messages sent to yourusername@gmail.com, your.username@gmail.com, and y.o.u.r.u.s.e.r.n.a.m.e@gmail.com are all delivered to your inbox, and only yours.

You might even get messages from mailing lists or website registrations because the intended recipient accidentally provided the wrong email address. In these cases, better contacting the original sender or website when possible to alert them to the mistake so that they correct their records.