Not all dots are created equal... especially in your Gmail address
Here’s a quick heads-up that might save you some serious headaches.
Gmail doesn’t treat dots in email addresses as unique. Whether your address is john.smith@gmail.com or jo.hn.smith@gmail.com, if it has a dot a copy of ALL your email gets sent to johnsmith@gmail.com too.
A very close family member learned this the hard way when their identity was stolen. Someone registered a non-dotted version of their email, and it went unnoticed for a while. The result? Credit card fraud…
Gmail’s handling of dots is a well-known trick for creating test accounts—using special characters like dots or plus signs (e.g., j.o.h.n.s.m.i.t+h@gmail.com)—it all still funnels back to the same inbox.
NOTE: If you are feeling “seen” right now, go register the non-dot version of your email, and if it’s already registered, well, fist make sure it wasn’t you in the past, but at this point I’d strongly recommend creating a new email account.
That’s great for testing, but not for your security. If you use a dotted email address, you might not realize who else could be receiving your private emails.
This is just a friendly public service announcement to keep your email security in check.
TIP: Talk to your family about password managers.
ADDED GRATUITY: Check if your email has been Pwned => https://haveibeenpwned.com/