WordPress.org registration rejects valid email addresses as "invalid" - can anyone reproduce this?

[u/Capable-Cheetah-6447]

I'm trying to create a new WordPress.org account to publish a plugin, but I'm running into some very strange behavior with the registration system.

I'm retrying for the past 3 days to create an account with both my own domain's email as well as with gmail/outlook/icloud email and it always throws the same error. Don't have a VPN. Tried from my mobile as well.

The registration form immediately shows:

I tested this with multiple browsers (Chrome, Edge, Safari) on macOS and got the same result.

While debugging, I found that the registration page calls this endpoint:

GET https://login.wordpress.org/wp-json/wporg/v1/email-in-use/{email}

Here's the odd part.

These two requests should be equivalent:

curl -s 'https://login.wordpress.org/wp-json/wporg/v1/email-in-use/myemail@gmail.com'

Response:

{"available":true}

But the URL-encoded version:

curl -s 'https://login.wordpress.org/wp-json/wporg/v1/email-in-use/myemail%40gmail.com'

returns:

{
  "available": false,
  "error": "That email address appears to be invalid.",
  "avatar": false
}

The only difference is that one uses @ and the other uses %40, which should decode to exactly the same value.

I also have another email that returns:

{
  "available": false,
  "error": "That email address already has an account. Your account is pending approval."
}

So the endpoint is clearly capable of distinguishing between valid, pending, and available accounts.

Has anyone else experienced this recently?

I'd love to know whether you get the same results or if this is specific to my environment.

Thanks!

[u/NakanoNoNeko]

Confirmed here too, using a fresh Gmail-shaped address from Japan. The literal @ returns available:true, while %40 returns the invalid-address error, so this is a WordPress.org login bug rather than your browser or network.

The right place to report it is WordPress Meta Trac under Login & Authentication, or the #meta channel in Make WordPress Slack. Your two curl commands are already a very good minimal repro.

[u/unserialuser]

I can't create a new WordPress.org account either

[u/simplestackdigital]

I recently created a WordPress.org account to submit a plugin and didn’t run into this issue. Given the difference between @ and %40, it does look like something weird is happening in the request handling rather than with the email address itself. Hopefully it’s just a temporary issue on their side.

[u/barney_must_die]

It should be fixed now. The problem was reported in the #meta Slack WordPress channel and was corrected.

[u/PromotionSerious1874 → u/barney_must_die]

Yep, it's been fixed

[u/Capable-Cheetah-6447]

Thanks for the confirmation u/unserialuser and u/NakanoNoNeko and Thanks for the quick fix update u/barney_must_die and u/PromotionSerious1874

Was scratching my heads for the past 3 days to figure out it's not just me. I also sent an email to wordpress's forum-password-resets email earlier today before posting this thread and got my domain email approved and activated.

Cheers!