The following two tricks work for Gmail and some other email providers as well: 1. I wanted to share 2 time-saving Gmail tricks that you might not be aware of. Looking over the subscriber list, I see that about two-thirds of you have Gmail addresses. The dots don't matter feature should be disabled by default.A number of folks have recently signed up to receive my emails. I wish for any mail sent to to bounce instead of reaching my inbox. Gmail users should be able to opt out of dots don't matter. 'The scam fundamentally relies on the Gmail user responding to an email with the assumption that it was sent to their canonical address, and not to some other address from their infinite address set. He wrote: 'Some blame lies with Netflix, but I believe the main problem lies with Gmail, and specifically Gmail's 'dots don't matter' feature. He said the 'dots don't matter' policy should be opt-out. The consumer must also check that an email relates to their own genuine account, and not an attacker's.' Who Is Responsible?Īccording to Fisher, both Gmail and Netflix share blame for allowing the attack to take place, but he said Google should be more responsible in how it manages email accounts. 'The attack is especially effective because it's not enough for the consumer to check that an email's sender is genuine. 'In my example, the attacker hopes to fool you into paying their Netflix bill, but the same scheme could be used to fool you into paying for more expensive services or handing out sensitive information. 'But there's another-more subtle-form of phishing: where an email looks like it's from your Netflix account, but actually it's from an attacker's Netflix account,' he said.

'Consumers might be aware of the dangers of phishing, where an email looks like it's from Netflix, but actually it's from an attacker,' he told Newsweek. 'You might think this email should have bounced, but instead it reached my inbox, because 'dots don't matter in Gmail addresses,'' he wrote in the blog post.Īs Netflix does not require users to verify their email addresses when they sign up, Fisher said it was then he realized it could be used to scam Gmail users.

But upon inspection, Fisher noticed the intended recipient's email address was similar to his own, apart from one single dot. He received an email from Netflix-which was legitimate-that was a notice for him to update his payment details.

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