Are email addresses case sensitive?

[macgrl]

Hi sorry if this is a stupid question but are email addresses case sensitive?

I am thinking of the situation where you fill in a form that says filling in in capitals or you want the address to be written clearly.

I have an icloud address and also a personal domain through google apps.

Is it okay to use capitals or does it create problems?

Many thanks

 

[ugahairydawgs]

No....its not case sensitive

 

[macgrl]

wonderful thanks 🙂

 

[Drew017]

Hi sorry if this is a stupid question but are email addresses case sensitive?

I am thinking of the situation where you fill in a form that says filling in in capitals or you want the address to be written clearly.

I have an icloud address and also a personal domain through google apps.

Is it okay to use capitals or does it create problems?

Many thanks

You can use capitals, but it really won't matter. For instance if I typed my email as Drew@me.com it would be no different than if I typed drew@me.com.

BTW that's not my email, just an example.

 

[Roke]

You can use capitals, but it really won't matter. For instance if I typed my email as Drew@me.com it would be no different than if I typed drew@me.com.

BTW that's not my email, just an example.

@Drew017, have you confirmed this with that domain? I ask because:

1. the RFC specifies case sensitivity, but some providers exempt their implementations from it
2. I want to modify the capitalisation of a .me e-mail address
3. I can't reasonably ask the recipient whether the sent mail has reached them
4. You're the sole person to mention this online, in relation to that domain

If you do happen to own a .me address to confirm this with, I'll be grateful.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

If you do happen to own a .me address to confirm this with, I'll be grateful.

I have an @iCloud.com email, and it's not case sensitive. I can't imagine .me or .Mac would be either; it's all the same thing.

 

[throAU]

It depends. AS per @Roke above, some implementations are, some aren't.

 

[tonmischa]

icloud.com, me.com und mac.com addresses are not case-sensitive.

 

[Roke]

icloud.com, me.com, und mac.com addresses, are not case-sensitive.

@tonmischa, thank you! Just to confirm, you've confirmed that, with me.com? (No worries if not; just want to ensure.)

 

[Nermal]

I've just done a test. An email sent to myself at me.com was received successfully despite using weird capitalisation.

 

[tonmischa]

@tonmischa, thank you! Just to confirm, you've confirmed that, with me.com? (No worries if not; just want to ensure.)

Yes.

Technically, the "local-part" (before the @) can be case-sensitive according to email standards (RFC 5321), but in practice, almost all modern, major email providers treat email addresses as case-insensitive. While theoretically possible in rare, self-hosted, or legacy systems, case-sensitivity is practically non-existent today.

 

[Nermal]

Some of you are going to love this... I'm at work and we rolled out a new system overnight. I just had to deal with a failure because an email address in the documentation and the actual email address were cased differently (nothing to do with me.com).

 

[tonmischa]

I'm at work and we rolled out a new system overnight.

That sounds like a lof of fun for the IT support staff. Good luck! 🙂

I work at a company with more than 4.000 employees. We have lots of groups and distribution lists. Stuff like CC.department_City@ or ProductEnrollmentUS@ . I can't even imagine the chaos that would ensue if the system would be changed to case-sensitive all of a sudden. 🙂

 

[throAU]

Some of you are going to love this... I'm at work and we rolled out a new system overnight. I just had to deal with a failure because an email address in the documentation and the actual email address were cased differently (nothing to do with me.com).

Yup, like i said, some are case sensitive, some aren’t.

Email is a cluster…

 

[Roke]

some are case sensitive, some aren’t.

Email is a cluster…

Tut tut. As always, just point your manager to the well-upvoted discussion on Stack Overflow. E-mail doesn't have to be a cluster… if everyone merely adheres to best practices!

We have lots of groups and distribution lists. Stuff like CC.department_City@ or ProductEnrollmentUS@.

I despise when a service renders my e-mail address as lower-case. Whether local part or domain, if I've entered upper-case letters, it's because I'm using title case! Some addresses become unreadable after Latin case normalisation.

 

[throAU]

Tut tut. As always, just point your manager to the well-upvoted discussion on Stack Overflow. E-mail doesn't have to be a cluster… if everyone merely adheres to best practices!

Fact is, email is and will forever remain a cluster because we can not control every user on the internet and it has about 50 years worth of poorly implemented standards and bandaids to work around legacy bad decisions that can not be undone without breaking email for large portions of the internet.

 

[QuarterSwede]

That sounds like a lof of fun for the IT support staff. Good luck! 🙂

I work at a company with more than 4.000 employees. We have lots of groups and distribution lists. Stuff like CC.department_City@ or ProductEnrollmentUS@ . I can't even imagine the chaos that would ensue if the system would be changed to case-sensitive all of a sudden. 🙂

I can’t even get my team to write correctly. Nothing would get sent, lol.

 

[Roke]

Fact is, email is and will forever remain a cluster because we can not control every user on the internet and it has about 50 years worth of poorly implemented standards and bandaids to work around legacy bad decisions that can not be undone without breaking email for large portions of the internet.

I'd say that not implementing case normalisation for a specific script is the safer option, and with the increasing complexity of UTF, having the local part be, essentially, a stream of bytes, rather than a specific character set. Yeah, it could be defined as a codepoint range, but what happens when a new language is added? We get DNS. It's also incredibly flexible, due to this.

I can’t even get my team to write correctly. Nothing would get sent, lol.

All governments are like that, though. Some NATO addresses I've had to contact are > 25 characters of an eldritch combination of camel, title, and snake case.

 

[throAU]

I speak as a former/current mail server administrator since the 90s - SMTP needs to die in a fire.

 

[Roke]

SMTP needs to die in a fire.

Does OAuth replace it?