Does anybody else who uses Gmail get other people's e-mail all the time?

[Deathknightish]

Maybe it's just that they type in the wrong e-mail address when they submit their info, but it's so often and for too many different people that it happens to me with, that I start to suspect something else is in the works.

I have a e-mail in the style of first letter of name.lastname@gmail.com, so something along the lines of J.Smith@gmail.com

I'm Swedish, and I keep getting e-mails in English and Norwegian (my last name is Norwegian) all the time, like order details, restaurant reservations, private e-mails from project managers (???), insurance companies and such.

I can narrow it down to like 4 different people, and they all have the same last name as I do, and first names that start with the same letter.

Does anybody else experience this? I've had this problem for years. I feel like there are too many people and too many different companies mailing for it to be a simple "Oops, I wrote the wrong e-mail by accident"-situation.

[P for Pancetta]

I often use fake emails when certain services require me to fill in an email for no good reason otherwise to just spam me. And when I do I often type john.johnson@gmail.com or another very common first/last name combination.

[Tsarez]

I often use fake emails when certain services require me to fill in an email for no good reason otherwise to just spam me. And when I do I often type john.johnson@gmail.com or another very common first/last name combination.

Every person with common names thanks you.
Just create a throwaway account on one of the many trash mail provider sites. Can't be too much to ask...

OP, is your name very common?

[Deathknightish]

Every person with common names thanks you.
Just create a throwaway account on one of the many trash mail provider sites. Can't be too much to ask...

OP, is your name very common?

My last name is one of Norway's most common, yes.

These sound like scam emails trying to get you to click the link.

Some of them seem fishy, but there are a lot of sincere ones, where they have apologized for mailing the wrong person when I've been in touch.
Seems like there is a comic for this situation as well;


So it's not just me apparently

[Poopymonster]

Maybe it's just that they type in the wrong e-mail address when they submit their info, but it's so often and for too many different people that it happens to me with, that I start to suspect something else is in the works.

I have a e-mail in the style of first letter of name.lastname@gmail.com, so something along the lines of J.Smith@gmail.com

I'm Swedish, and I keep getting e-mails in English and Norwegian (my last name is Norwegian) all the time, like order details, restaurant reservations, private e-mails from project managers (???), insurance companies and such.

I can narrow it down to like 4 different people, and they all have the same last name as I do, and first names that start with the same letter.

Does anybody else experience this? I've had this problem for years. I feel like there are too many people and too many different companies mailing for it to be a simple "Oops, I wrote the wrong e-mail by accident"-situation.

I keep getting emails from someone with the same gmail addy except they have a period after the first letter. Example Pmonster and P.monster. I get receipts, travel confirmation, hotel checkout, more receipts. I've heard it's on Google for not seeing the period. It's on the company. It's on the billing company. Its on everyone BUT the person I'm talking to. It's bullshit.

After Abercrombie and Fitch sent me their once every three week receipt from a person in Connecticut I contacted them. They claimed they could do nothing about it. Back and forth emails. Replied bcc'd in Mastercard's fraud department "So you're telling me you're still sending me email receipts made by a customer in your store I didn't shop at, paid with a credit card not in my name, and you're giving me their personal information and you have no problems with that? Just want to be sure we're on the same page." A week later I got email a apologizing and it won't happen again. The hotel and travel ones, I just ignore.

The fun ones are "Just to let you know, your child's school is closed" Reply No it's not.
Or the apartment one about a lease, demanding that I made the mistake submitting my email address not them.

[Tsarez]

My last name is one of Norway's most common, yes.



Some of them seem fishy, but there are a lot of sincere ones, where they have apologized for mailing the wrong person when I've been in touch.
Seems like there is a comic for this situation as well;


So it's not just me apparently

Yes these things can happen. I have an extremely rare name, Facebook says I exist maybe 5 or 6 times worldwide. So I cannot say I can relate. However, I imagine Andreas Müller in Germany to be somewhat in the thousands and thousands. a.mueller or a.muller are very easy to confuse, especially if you have to remember the address from your head instead of having it saved.

[Fencers]

Yes!

For years I have been getting the emails of a man in California who must have an email address one letter off from both my own and my husband's email. We have personal and work emails that use our family name (I took my husband's name when I married) and share the same first letter of our first names.

I get this guy's receipts, doctor's appointments, travel itinerary, personal emails (to him, not from him obvs.), and so on. It's been a mini-saga of sorts!

He got a divorce a few years ago and had cancer. But he beat cancer and met someone, a woman from Mexico. Recently he bought a new car, but the dealer keeps harassing him for maintenance or something. Went on vacation in Greece a few years ago. I was happy for him.

It's admittedly super creepy I am reading this guy's life. But I tried to reach out to him and his friends & family and tell them that the email address is being written incorrectly. Never got a reply back from any attempt to contact this fellow. I even called his cell number, because yes I have that too, but it went right to VM. No callback and I left a nice message!

I suspect VERY strongly having read his emails for years, his correspondents are messing up his middle initial in the email address. They are mistaking a lower case L in his middle name for a lower case I. We have the same first letter first name and exactly the same last name. My husband is Spanish and the mistaken emailer is Latinx. So that is why I have the unusual combination of a Hispanic-derived family name despite being born Jewish.

Occasionally my husband gets his emails as well. Though he gets more of my business emails before I added a hyphen so I could go by my maiden surname-family name for work. Which made more sense professionally.

I think it's kinda fun at this point. It has to be more than 10 years.

[Tziva]

Yes, I have two specific people who apparently don't know their own email address and give mine out all the time. I get probably 4-5 a week between the two of them. One sounds like an older lady but the other guy clearly works in IT! They aren't scam emails; I get stuff from their work and friends in addition to the usual email shit and on rare occasion some very important stuff. One email was notifying me someone in their family died.

I've replied to a couple of the important ones to let them know I'm not them, and once to one whose work contact kept bumping the email trying to get a response for weeks to finally say look I'm not him please stop emailing me.

[Endus]

Yeah, there's a couple people who use my e-mail as a trash account. At least one of them is a huge idiot; they're in the UK military and they had the wrong e-mail address with their employers, so I got a couple pay stubs before I tracked down a link and sent them a "you shouldn't be sending a Canuck confidential and classified material, I think" notice.

I've heard it's on Google for not seeing the period.

It's not "on Google", this is specifically an intended Google feature. My e-mail proper is "firstname.lastname@gmail.com". If I get anything sent to "firstnamelastname@gmail.com", no period, it gets auto-flagged as spam/garbage. The feature comes in that you can use different period positions to classify your e-mails; if I add a period after the first letter of my name, and that's my "junk e-mail", I can set all e-mails sent there to auto-delete. If I want to set up special assignments for where to send e-mails, I can do so based on those period positions. You can also tell exactly where some spammer got your e-mail.

After Abercrombie and Fitch sent me their once every three week receipt from a person in Connecticut I contacted them. They claimed they could do nothing about it. Back and forth emails. Replied bcc'd in Mastercard's fraud department "So you're telling me you're still sending me email receipts made by a customer in your store I didn't shop at, paid with a credit card not in my name, and you're giving me their personal information and you have no problems with that? Just want to be sure we're on the same page." A week later I got email a apologizing and it won't happen again. The hotel and travel ones, I just ignore.

It's not the provider's problem because it's the e-mail the customer designated. It's the customers' fault you're getting their personal info.

The fun ones are "Just to let you know, your child's school is closed" Reply No it's not.
Or the apartment one about a lease, demanding that I made the mistake submitting my email address not them.

I'll also note; them having your e-mail means nothing, especially if it's not actually the same period setup you actually use as your primary. This isn't identity theft or something; they can't pursue you via that e-mail alone to get you to pay someone else's fees, under the law.

[Floofi]

I get emails intended for some guy in New York who occasionally orders from Door Dash. He has a period in his address, I don't. Thought that someone hijacked my Door Dash account at first, which would be extremely dumb since he gave his address.

Good to know that this is a more common problem than I thought.

[Rozz]

I'm glad my name isn't common enough to ever worry about this...

[GreenJesus]

My dads cousin has the same last name and first initial so our emails are probably super similar. I occasionally get his emails.

[jonnysensible]

yea but i really shouldnt have taken stephenspielberg@gmail.com especially as its not my name

[Kathandira]

Heard a great tip not long ago.

When signing up for anything on the internet, use the companies name as your last name in the personal information fields. This way, when you get spam, junk, or any sort of unwanted email, it will be addressed to Your First Name, Company Name. This way you can see exactly who sold your information and file an official complaint.

Examples: John Amazon, John Ebay, John Walmart