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Things I’ve learned with an one-letter email address
As anyone can see, I have my own internet domain name; and sure enough, my domain is based on my name (zeh.com.br). When deciding on an email address to use on that kind of domains, people usually go for the easy or obvious route – for example, using simple addresses such as me@zeh.com.br or zeh@zeh.com.br.
Instead, when I was setting up my new email account, I decided to create separate mailboxes, so they could be used for different purposes – g@ for generic email (ie, might get spammed), l@ for subscribing on discussion lists, and sure enough, z@ for personal, humane email contact.
This has posed a number of problems though. Now, after a couple of years using that approach, I’ve learned that:
- My email address is wrong. You see, there’s no way somebody can have an email address with one letter as the user name. It’s impossible. So my email address is, obviously, wrong. Who says so? JavaScript checks on some major e-commerce sites (like this one, just to cite one of many examples). Instead of checking email addresses against some simple regular expressions – ie, *@*.* – they opt on doing some other crazy checks and assume rules that aren’t actually usual – like that an email with one single letter is invalid.
- I’m spam. Yeah, this took me by surprise too – I was quite sure I was sending real email wrote by a real person. The thing is, some of my mail wasn’t getting delivered and it was just recently that I decided to run some tests. It turns out some email server software automatically blocks email addresses with one letter only – silently.
- I’m fooling people. I just love when people ask for my email in real life and they look at me puzzled after I write it down. They think that it sure can’t be right – that domain name (my name is as generic in my country as John Doe in english), and with only one letter as the username? It can’t be real.
Shattering news, I know. Even so, I’m not stopping using one-letter email addresses. The solution (at least for less-then-smart websites)? Redirects like gg@. Thanks, Internet.
Comments (1)
LOL — i about died when i read this, but I am also puzzled because a friend of mine has had a single letter email address for *years* and not found issues like you have. for many people, it makes it easy to remember hers.
keep it up! there’s no need to change simply because some programmers are too damn lazy to consider alternatives to their worldview….. 😛
Posted by billyO on 20/Apr/2006 at 3:01 pm