As an example, let's say we start with "[email protected] " (note the trailing space which our hypothetical user entered by mistake). If we md5 encode that string directly, we get the following (in PHP):

echo md5( "[email protected] " );
// "f9879d71855b5ff21e4963273a886bfc"

If we now run that same email address through the above process, you will see that we get a different result (again in PHP):