The local parts of email addresses are standardized, and there is an RFC handling subadressing as well, see RFC 5233 - it’s not like Gmail invented this behavior.
Also, RFC 5321 clearly states (2.3.11) that the local part of an email must only be interpreted by the receiving server, so that part should not be parsed, modified or mangled in any form - the assumptions poor web forms or validation libraries make these days are incredibly annoying and simply not compliant.
So no, non of your suggestions are good, let alone ideal. Ideally, people would simply implement the specs and stop making lazy and false assumptions. In the case you cited, it turns out email validation is simply not the proper tool to limit how often the form can be submitted. Similar websites use e. g. text messages.
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Eh, honestly I think blocking plus addressing as a workaround to block people from using multiple identities on the site is very weak argument and ignores completely the reason plus addeesses are being used in the first place, tagging.
And the addition of “-” just tells they don’t really know what they’re doing, considering it’s not only valid but also very common symbol in email addresses
neatchee@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I don’t think the reason they’re being used is relevant to their problem though. “Think like an attacker” wins the day here: as an attacker, I don’t care what it’s meant for, only how I can use it to my advantage. If it’s something they observed as a problem, I understand why they would want to stop it.
As for “-”, yeah, I don’t have a particularly good explanation for that one except the assumption that it’s something similar to + addressing on a different service.
bloor@feddit.de 7 months ago
“-” is the default delimiter in qmail. I administer a system, where both + and - are valid recipient delimiters for historic reasons and we can’t really get rid of it.
Believe me, it has caused all kinds of problems, where we have to go deep into the finer differences between aliases and virtual aliases and transport maps in postfix to route mails correctly. Especially since we have a lot of Mailinglists with - as a valid character in them.
So to summarize: the assumption by changeorg is valid, however the execution seems rather flawed.
neatchee@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Good info! Sounds like a nightmare :x
Yeah, I can’t say their solution is the most elegant but it certainly makes a kind of sense when their criteria for success is “maximize participation while satisfying ‘uniqueness’ critics”