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One Gmail address, one signature

Gmail ignores dots in an address: [email protected] and [email protected] are the same address to Google, and to us. One Gmail account can sign your petition once, not thirty times.

The trick this closes

Google delivers mail to one Gmail inbox no matter where the dots sit in the address, and it ignores anything after a plus sign. One account therefore has an unlimited supply of addresses that all look different and all work:

Every one of them receives its own confirmation message, so on a platform that counts them as different people, a single person can confirm signature after signature from one inbox. It takes a few minutes and no technical skill, and a large share of petition platforms still count every variation as a different person.

What we do instead

Before a signature is stored, the address is brought to one standard form:

  1. It is lowercased, so [email protected] and [email protected] are the same.
  2. googlemail.com becomes gmail.com, because Google treats the two domains as one.
  3. For Gmail addresses, everything after a plus sign is dropped.
  4. For Gmail addresses, the dots in the part before the at sign are removed.

The result is the address your petition counts. All four examples above collapse into [email protected], so the second one of them to arrive is recognized as a repeat.

The signatory still gets their mail

We keep the address exactly as it was typed, next to the standard form. The confirmation message, the thank-you message and your updates all go to the typed address, so a signatory who writes their address with dots does not notice anything.

What they do notice is this: if the same inbox signs again, no second signature is added. We email the address instead, saying "You have already signed the petition" and showing the existing signature under the heading "Your existing signature", with a Manage your signature link for editing or removing it. We do not announce on the page whether an address has signed, because that would let anyone test addresses against your signature list.

Who this helps

It helps anyone whose petition is contested. A petition about a local building project will have opponents, and the first thing an opponent looks for is padding in the signature list. If the list can be shown to hold thirty dotted variations of one Gmail address, the argument moves from the building project to your credibility.

It also helps the decision-maker. One signature per inbox is a number they can use, and a number is only useful if it means people.

Limits and good to know

This is one check among several, not a complete defense. It stops the easiest kind of padding. It does not stop somebody who owns many real mailboxes at different providers, and we confirm email addresses, not identities. If you need to be able to verify signatories, ask for a phone number on the form so you can call them.

Addresses at other providers keep their dots, because at most providers a dot is a real part of the address and removing it would merge two different people.

There is one deliberate exception. Households sometimes share a single address. As the petition author you can add such signatures yourself on the Add a signature page by choosing the reason "The signatory shares an email address with another signatory": up to four signatures can share one address, and each of them has to have a different name. We record the reason you gave with each signature you add this way.

Questions and answers

Which address does the confirmation message go to?

The address the signatory typed. We store that form as well, so the message arrives normally even though the signature is counted under the normalized address.

Does this apply to other email providers?

The dot and plus-tag rule applies to Gmail and googlemail.com addresses, because that is how Google treats them. At other providers a dot can be a real part of the address, so we leave those addresses as they are, apart from lowercasing them.

Two people in my family share one address. Can they both sign?

Not from the signature form, which accepts one signature per address. As the petition author you can add the second signature yourself on the "Add a signature" page, choosing the reason "The signatory shares an email address with another signatory". Up to four signatures can share one address this way, each with a different name.

What happens if an address that has already signed signs again?

No second signature is added. We email that address to say it has already signed, show the existing signature and offer a link for managing it.

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