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Google lets you put any number of periods in your gmail address, and it ignores all of them when receiving mail for you.

Try it; it's fun!

Spammers have taken advantage of this, unfortunately, to spam more and more easily.

If you see a Gmail address with about as many periods as letters, it is probably a spammer. If that address turns up twice, differing only by the number or placement of periods, it is pretty certainly a spammer.