Some cybercriminals are taking advantage of a long-standing feature in Google Gmail designed to enhance account security, to create multiple fraudulent accounts on various websites quickly and at scale, security vendor Agari said this week.

The feature, which some have warned about previously, basically ensures that all dotted variations of a Gmail address belong to the same account. For example, Google treats johnsmith (at) gmail.com the same as john.smith (at) gmail.com and jo.hn.smith (at) gmail.com. An individual with johnsmith (at) gmail.com as their email address would therefore receive emails sent to all dotted variations of the same address.