Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Email address validation
Raised as a usability problem by 12 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 12 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Validators reject valid plus-addressed emails, forcing abandonmentUnreviewed
20102026- Validation rejects valid addresses or typos users can't spot, locking them out2026-06-10
- Form validators reject valid plus-addressed emails, forcing users to abandon their chosen address2022-06-01
- Valid short email addresses are rejected at sign-up, blocking account creation with misleading errors2021-06-25
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 12 complaints
- Validation rejects valid addresses or typos users can't spot, locking them out2026-06-10
- Form validators reject valid plus-addressed emails, forcing users to abandon their chosen address2022-06-01
- Valid short email addresses are rejected at sign-up, blocking account creation with misleading errors2021-06-25
- Strict email regexes reject valid addresses users have typed correctly2018-03-06
- Rewriting user-entered addresses silently can corrupt what the user typed2016-09-09
- Sites reject valid addresses like .su domains or those containing plus signs2015-02-22
- Forced to type email twice, which is annoying and pointless2013-09-18
- Typos in email addresses go uncaught, and users must re-enter data after errors2013-01-03
- Users wait for a confirmation email that never arrives after an invalid address is accepted2012-12-01
- Forced to retype email in a second field, and some sites block pasting into it2012-11-16
- Plus-addressed emails rejected, so people can't unsubscribe from lists2011-02-14
- Such short-domain addresses are often rejected by web forms and hard to explain, so they frequently don't work2010-05-28