Unusual email addresses

The email format has support for a much broader range of email addresses than most people utilize, in this project I registered some of the unusual ones I came across. As most email addresses are registered to me, feel free to send a message to me!

Tools used

Gmail for sending emails
Freenom for registering domains
ImprovMX for forwarding emails to my real inbox
Cloudflare for adding the improvMX DNS-records

Method

Longest email address

To start of with I searched for the maximum amount of characters allowed in an email address, and according to stackoverflow it can be no longer than 320 characters, in the format [64]@[255].

As I had to find some kind of unlimited pattern I settled for π, out of which I could create pick the first ~300 digits as my new email address. After successfully registering the domain I would try to send an email to it through gmail, and surprisingly it went through successfully.

3.1415926535897932381146264338327950288419716939937510582097494459@230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384.460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294.895493038196442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190914.5648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587006.tk

However as I looked closely at it, I realized that the username was 66 characters, 2 characters longer than expected. I also realized that the maximum length of a valid domain is actually 253 characters instead of the 255 previously stated, as cloudflare would not allow anything longer than that.

After finding this I started adding more characters to the username part, until I hit an upper limit of 998 characters. I also removed all unnecessary dots in order to make room for more π-decimals.
The final email address was now 1,252 characters long and contained the first 1,245‬ decimals of π.

31415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412737245870066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185480744623799627495673518857527248912279381830119491298336733624406566430860213949463952247371907021798609437027705392171762931767523846748184676694051320005681271452635608277857713427577896091736371787214684409012249534301465495853710507922796892589235420199561121290219608640344181598136297747713099605187072113499999983729780499510597317328160963185950244594553469083026425223082533446850352619311881710100031378387528865875332083814206171776691473035982534904287554687311595628638823537875937519577818577805321712268066130019278766111959092164201@989380952572010654858632788659361533818279682303019520353018529.689957736225994138912497217752834791315155748572424541506959508.295331168617278558890750983817546374649393192550604009277016711.3900984882401285836160356370766010471018194295559619894676.tk

This surprisingly long email address made me curious about the other end of the spectrum. What is the shortest possible email address i could register?
It turns out that an email address is made up out of at least 6 characters. As the email address is made out of [username]@[domain].[top-level-domain] where the username and password are both a minimum of 1 character long and the top level domain is made out of a minimum of 2 characters (in theory there could probably exist a 1 character top level domain, but for now the shortest one is 2 characters).

Shortest email address

Unfortunately I could establish that all 1 character domains were either taken or extremely expensive, after looking around for a bit in Freenom. I figured, though, that it was possible that Freenom used a system where all 1 character domain names were automatically made expensive, as all one character domains had the same prize. As a workaround I tried to register a domain with a non-ascii character instead, something that was made possible in 2008 when punycode was standardized. Punycode is a somewhat ugly client side hack that allows for encoding and decoding of (most) unicode characters in a domain.

I went to punycoder.com and put in "ä" which was encoded to "xn--4ca". This new code is clearly more than one character long, which is what we want Freenom to believe in order to give it to us for free, however when put into any modern browser it will be displayed as a single character "ä". Just as I've hoped this method worked and I could successfully register ä.gq for free. After configuring the MX-records, so that I can receive emails, the final email address contains no more than 6 characters.

e@ä.gq

Emoji email addresses

After getting getting to know punycode, I wanted to get a closer look at what it had to offer and as it turns out, it is possible to register domains containing emojis! Even more surprisingly gmail has support for this, giving me a golden opportunity to register a weird emoji-domain. When I tried to register such a emoji-domain i quickly found out that I was not the first one to try this. In fact nearly all single-emoji-domains were taken, greatly limiting my options. Still, I managed to claim the following email addresses that I found to be quite cool:

mail@📬.ml
erik@👨‍💻.cf
allah@🛐.ml
steffe@🇸🇪.gq
work@📄.tk

Weird email addresses

Before finishing my project I wanted to make some other weird email addresses. I tried to find unicode alternatives of otherwise illegal domain name characters. This is what i came up with:

!!!!!!!!!@ǃǃǃǃǃǃǃǃǃ.cf
#$&?@ǃ∗٪.ga

Result

The worlds longest email address (1252 characters)

The worlds shortest email address (6 characters)

e@ä.gq

Emoji email addresses

mail@📬.ml
erik@👨‍💻.cf
allah@🛐.ml
steffe@🇸🇪.gq
work@📄.tk

Some other weird email addresses

!!!!!!!!!@ǃǃǃǃǃǃǃǃǃ.cf
#$&?@ǃ∗٪.ga

Unusual email addresses

Summary

Tools used

Method

Longest email address

Shortest email address

Emoji email addresses

Weird email addresses

Result