Hi
Yes, it is true that advertisers and other data processors commonly remove periods from the local part (the part before the '@') of Gmail addresses before generating an MD5 hash. This practice is part of a process called
email normalization, which ensures that different spellings of the same email address produce the same hash value
The reason for this step is rooted in how Gmail handles incoming mail.
Gmail ignores all periods in the local part of an email address . This means that messages sent to these addresses are all delivered to the same Gmail inbox:
Without normalization, each variation would generate a completely different MD5 hash, making it appear as three different users. By removing the periods before hashing, all these variations result in a single, consistent hash for
username@gmail.com, allowing for accurate user identification and data deduplication.
Regards
