f1vlad.com

by Vladislav Kulchitski

*

Username is not available — says Gmail — but neither is it taken!

"

After inability to register a desired username at Gmail, I settled with an alternative. But in years passed I haven't stopped wondering why I can register this screen name with every service, but Gmail.

Recently, this has come up in a conversation with a couple of friends and it resulted in a number of experiments with Gmail registration system. Findings were quite interesting and were leaving more questions than answers. The following are the things that we found:

  1. 1. Certain male names with prefix 'f1' cannot be registered with Gmail. One would assume they're taken, but they aren't. We've sent test emails to these accounts, but we get back "This Gmail user does not exist". Examples: f1rich, f1richard, f1robert, f1alexander, f1nate, f1sasha.
  2. 2. Female name with prefix 'f1' can easily be registered and marked as available in ajaxy registration form. Examples: f1sally, f1catherine, f1becky, f1molly, f1britney.
  3. 3. If you swap 'f1' with 'f2' for male names, names become available.

Why would Google keep these usernames reserved?

|


Archived comments

If I had to make a guess, I

—

If I had to make a guess, I guess, they change the registered name of the configuration file from the Google account and retain these addresses. Do not know why, especially if I can not ask my name, because it ...

why is this

—

I really want an email address but its taken but has not been used in a long time is there any way to get it?

Username cross-over?

—

Very similar problem here, though I tried to do a password recovery on the email account and it referenced directly to my existing google/gmail. I can even log in with this email address and be taken to my account. It just doesn't exist.

If I have to make a guess, then I would guess that they're taking variations of registered names from google account profiles and reserving those addresses. Don't know why, especially if I can't claim my own name because of it...

Gmail login system sucks

—

They don't recycle login names. Even if you delete your login, you won't be able to re-register it forever.
I can't find a reason for such thing. It sucks. In 5 years, if you want to register the email with a login like "david", it'll suggest you "da.vv.id.252324.5432.1998@gmail.com".

It's retarded to don't recycle logins.

youtube

—

i went to make acct on youtube, went to page to choose username, clicked accept, then i clicked back to fill in my postal code, b/c i wanted it in their, then the username wasn't available! i didn't put in a password yet, so i can't recover it, nor did i put in an email

what kind of stupid system does youtube have? shouldn't password be on the same page as the username, bunch of idiots!

Account names are never

—

Account names are never recycled. So if the account was once used (the name will never again be available) and later deleted (no longer valid) it would explain the results you got.

I have tried taking several

—

I have tried taking several very unique names that were unavailable. I always assumed that the email address was already taken, but now I'm not so sure...

I might be wrong, but I think

—

I might be wrong, but I think it's enough to try to send an email to the username that is supposedly unavailable. In my case, it gets bounced. Which tells me that user id is reserved but not used as a regular username. Well in my case it's pretty unique and personal to _myself_, hence it's strange google would reserve that as it's neither dictionary word or any popular word combination. That is what is strange.

My friend and I experimented with it a little bit and found a number of interesting combinations reserved, with no immediate and apparent explanations.