One of my primary pet peeves with Gmail. It leads to a lot more junk mail arriving in my inbox. My real Gmail address is 'first.m.last', and almost all the spam I get is addressed to 'firstmlast'. Gmail is great at filtering out spam so that I don't see most of it, but if not for their unconventional filtering of recipients, I'd get even less. I also get a lot of email from idiots who don't know their own address and provide mine instead, and literally all of that would bounce without their . handling.

Same here. I send everything that is firstlast@gmail straight to junk.

> I also get a lot of email from idiots who don't know their own address

Holy crap there are a lot of them. I've got one bank sending me the dude's statements. He's also been on some interesting trips, seen all his hotel stays, etc.

Same. I don't have a very common name but there are at least two other people who share it. One has used my GMail address to apply for jobs and for his unemployment benefits. I'm guessing he isn't having much luck with either one.

The other finally figured it out but his wife still hasn't after more than a decade. It gets really old receiving reminders to service a vehicle I've never owned from a dealership 2000 miles away among other similar crap.

I thought it would be nice to have my name without numbers as my gmail, but with all the stories i've heard, I think i'm glad I have the numbers now.

This pattern is often abused by spambots trying to avoid dupe detection, so using it excessively may lead to your login being treated as spam.