Alternatives to '+' in plus-addressing? Other characters - ".", "%" ?

[elvey]

Is "." / what are the Alternatives to '+' in plus-addressing?

A certain horrible gov't agency (dmv.ca.gov) has started (sometime in the last 6 months) blocking both +-addressing and @username.fastmail.tld and @username.usersown.tld addresses. I had to make a custom alias just for them. I was tempted to make it [stringofwordsEdwinwouldn'tallow]@fastmail.tld,

http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...1&postcount=15 suggests "." and the FastMail help page doesn't mention anything and I can't remember or find it documented, but I think there were several.

Oh, just about to hit Submit, and realizing % is probably another one.

PS Hi, long time no see, to all the old-timers still here.

[TenFour]

There's also Catchall/Wildcard aliases. https://www.fastmail.com/help/receiv...-catchall.html

[BritTim]

I suspect in looking for alternatives for plus addressing, you are mixing this up with a special feature Fastmail provides for POP retrieval (being able to retrieve messages from different folders than just the regular Inbox) in combination with the ability to use alternative usernames when accessing Fastmail services (such as IMAP) from external mail clients. It allows, for instance, a POP username setup of userid+SomeFolder#fastmail.com to extract messages from the SomeFolder folder of userid@fastmail.com.
This is all documented in https://www.fastmail.com/help/techni...sandports.html

As far as I know, there is no way to use plus addressing without the "+" except subdomain addressing which is usually the superior method. I am quite surprised there are email services that reject the use of destination addresses of the form whatever@username.fastmail.com.

[Grhm]

Originally Posted by BritTim

I am quite surprised there are email services that reject the use of destination addresses of the form whatever@username.fastmail.com.

Worse than that, elvey says addresses of the form something@username.usersown.tld are blocked, which, unless I've misunderstood, means any address with two or more dots after the @
Tell me this isn't true.
ALL my addresses take that form !

[placebo]

Originally Posted by elvey

A certain horrible gov't agency (dmv.ca.gov) has started (sometime in the last 6 months) blocking both +-addressing and @username.fastmail.tld and @username.usersown.tld addresses. I had to make a custom alias just for them. I was tempted to make it [stringofwordsEdwinwouldn'tallow]@fastmail.tld,

I just tried, and I was able to change my email address at the CA DMV website to one using +-addressing.

[hadaso]

Perhaps they cancelled their restrictions after some employees complained about not being able to register with username@dmv.ca.gov ...

[elvey]

Originally Posted by hadaso

Perhaps they cancelled their restrictions after some employees complained about not being able to register with username@dmv.ca.gov ...

LOL! (and for another laugh, see D, below!)

Thanks for the help folks, especially placebo! It's still broken:

It's the particular DMV subsystem I was trying to use that's horribly broken. I took a ton of screenshots, but posting them would give away my usernames and domains. Specifically, it's the "DMV’s assisted online renewal system" (VFO for registration) that has this nastyness.

Gory Details, FYI:

Yup. Grhm, it's true. The broken system is at https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv-vi...-renewal-form/ ! And click next. (It's reachable via https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicl...ation-renewal/ (and scrolling down to where it says please use DMV’s assisted online renewal system instead) which in turn is reachable via https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv-vi...ation-renewal/ (V.F.O. - Virtual Field Office)...)

(What is not broken - as placebo says - is that my something@username.usersown.tld MyDMV account still exists and I can log into it. I do not know if the "self-service renewal" registration system has the problem as well, or not. Didn't try.)

It gets worse. Here's HOW the system is broken - in multiple ways, depending on which kind of addressing is attempted.

A) If you put in an address of the form evilagencychecksum@username.fastmail.tld into the FIRST part/page of the form - Customer Info / Contact Information, you get an error message:
We found a problem with the email ID being used. Please try another email.

B) Same thing with an address of the form evilagencychecksum@username.usersown.tld. It's inappropriate and not super informative, but I've seen worse.

C) It gets worse if you put in an address of the form username+evilagencychecksumj@fastmail.tld into the FIRST part/page of the form - Customer Info / Contact Information, you get NO error message. It accepts the address. But wait! It then takes you thru to pages 2, 3, 4, and 5 of the form. Feeling lucky? Don't. When you submit the form, it will show a silly animation for ... a ... long ... time ... and ... THEN ... ... ... fail.

D) It WILL ALSO initially accept the address thisisbeyondbelief@dmv.ca.gov... - an exception to B.

E) It did accept an address of the form customaliascreatedspeciallyforforevi...y@fastmail.tld.

F) It won't actually accept the address customaliascreatedspeciallyforforevilagency@fastmail.fm, presumably because it's too long for their, erm, taste.

G) It gets even worse. Ignore the warning at your peril, which reads:

*Form should be filled using Chrome (standard window), Firefox or Edge Chromium. If you choose to use Chrome Incognito or Safari, you will need to disable the “Prevent cross-site tracking” behavior in the browser.


If you don't notice this, when you get to the 5th page and try to submit, nothing will happen. The warning was back on page 1, so you have no idea why it's not working. Especially if you don't even know what cross-site tracking IS!

If you enable cross-site tracking this AFTER you have started filling out the form, you will have to start over at the beginning.

[elvey]

TO anyone who thinks the problem is unintentional:

I suggest you read https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...s-pua-new-york or better yet its source, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...ss-safety-net/

Same scam, I'm sure.

Florida officials are reporting .... a broken state claims system. And that was the point, according to an adviser to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who explained that former governor Rick Scott (R), now a U.S. senator, deliberately designed the online system to “make it harder for people”

The process of “bureaucratic disentitlement” is the intentional use of red tape, byzantine application systems that even lawyers have trouble navigating, onerous paperwork requirements and systematic underfunding

[NumberSix]

Originally Posted by hadaso

Perhaps they cancelled their restrictions after some employees complained about not being able to register with username@dmv.ca.gov ...

It seems to me possible that this whole problem is the result of DMV hiring some barely competent young programmer to be in charge of this particular part of their software, and he has written a broken (i.e. insufficiently flexible) email address validator. Perhaps if you complain to them loudly enough, asking to speak to someone in the IT department, and explain clearly and angrily that it is unacceptable for a gov't agency to have a web site that rejects perfectly valid email addresses as invalid.... well.... you might be surprised that you might get through to them. And maybe that bonehead programmer will learn something as a result. No guarantees, of course... it is, after all, a gov't agency. I hate to say it but.. you know... in California, all the good/competent IT folk work for high pay in the private sector, and I suspect the public sector just gets the dregs left behind...

To get to something you asked at the top, I don't think you will find that any other character can replace '+' in plus-addressing, IF you want the special behaviors associated with that to work, namely, to have mail auto-filed into certain folders by FM. Of course you can use a '.' or '-' to separate words on the left side of an address, but those won't trigger the special '+' functionality.

[pjroutledge]

The same barely competent young programmer might also have developed an email validity checker for Android at some stage.

I have accounts at several websites that won't accept my valid email address when I try to access them using Android (whether in a browser or an app). But I can log on to the same accounts (using a browser) with the same email addresses on both Windows and Linux PCs.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by pjroutledge

The same barely competent young programmer might also have developed an email validity checker for Android at some stage.

I have accounts at several websites that won't accept my valid email address when I try to access them using Android (whether in a browser or an app). But I can log on to the same accounts (using a browser) with the same email addresses on both Windows and Linux PCs.

Just out of interest, have you been able to verify for sure that the special characters you believe you are entering in Android are really what you think they are. You are, I know, technically quite competent. However, I have seen hyphen and minus sign (for instance) mixed up not infrequently.

[pjroutledge]

Originally Posted by BritTim

Just out of interest, have you been able to verify for sure that the special characters you believe you are entering in Android are really what you think they are. You are, I know, technically quite competent. However, I have seen hyphen and minus sign (for instance) mixed up not infrequently.

Ah, I confess that my comment was an aside, and probably off-topic.

My comment was triggered by the reference to the young programmer and I was referring to TLDs that are rejected by at least some Android apps. The TLD '.email' (eg <user>@<label>.email) for example is rejected. I'm less certain, but I think I've also had either '.xyz' or '.cloud' (or both) rejected too. If I've understood it correctly, RFC2821 effectively specifies a valid email address as '<a mailbox name>@<a resolvable FQDN>', whereas the Android test (my assumption) seems to expect variations of '.com' or 'com.<country code>' or '.org', etc, etc.

I suspect Android is the culprit because the same email addresses have been rejected when using a few different Android apps and browsers but they work fine on desktop operating systems (implying that the validity test fails before getting to the site).

Unfortunately I haven't kept records and I've moved on.

I apologise again - was not intending to hijack the thread.