Thread:Project:Support desk/spammers avoiding bans by abusing gmail dot e-mail address feature

We have problem with spamming our local mediawiki site with e-mail registration and multiple anti-spam features enabled (captcha, dnsbl, word filter). The problem is that its not possible to ban an user (spammer) who has access to multiple IP addresses by blocking his gmail.com e-mail address. We have problem with such users keep coming back with different forms of the same address by adding random dots within the username. Ie:

spammer.spammer@gmail.com

spa.m.m.erspammer.@gmail.com

s.p.a.mmerspammer@gmail.com

Mediawiki considers these e-mails to be different, while they are actually the same. http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10313#

While it is possible to resolve this by modifying includes/User.php I'd like this issue to be addressed in the official release of Mediawiki. Ie. enable mediawiki to recognize different forms of gmail address to be the same.