WWYD- Getting someone elses emails? (LIGHTHEARTED!!!!)

This happens to me too. Whilst slightly irritating for us both she could just delete emails she realises are for me or advise me that 70 year old auntie Margaret has my email wrong in the first instance. She rants makes threats to report me for GDPR offences or to my employer every time someone sends her an email meant for me. It happens sometimes.... forward the email and let them know that person has their email address wrong then block the senders email address.

Indeed,

The problem in this thread is not between my.name@gmail and myname@gmail. it is that someone is incapable of using their real email address of my.y.name or myyname (they're both the same thing).

gmail, hotmail, secure government email, royalmail, a telegram, whatever can't send something to the right place if you tell it to go to the wrong place.

It isn't a problem with gmail dots.
It is a problem of putting the wrong email address and missing a letter out.

@WiddlinDiddlin I think @Thamantha was saying it had clearly happened to her, not in your case!

I quite like hearing about North Carolina me. I don't get the emails so much any more now.

I absolutely do understand what Gmail should do ( IE the dot makes no difference), but I have also observed different behaviours ie I used to reply to the person and cc the no dot email ( copy & paste) sometime it came back to me ( as designed Gmail behaviour) , sometime it didn't ( unexpected behaviour). I stopped doing that a few years ago - so not sure I could trigger it again.

I have also done reverse emails searches on 'both' email structures and it has returned 2 profiles - one being the same 'other me'

I not making any argument about Gmail functionality as designed, I simply talking about odd behaviours

Nobody’s saying it doesn’t happen that people get someone else email. It happens to me actually!

What we’re disputing is that this has anything to do with dots in emails, because it doesn’t, it can’t, and it’s easily disproved.

Not least by the simple question - how do you know what the other person’s email
address is? It can’t be what’s in the address line of the email because that’s your address, by logic of the fact you received it!

Why are people so insistent it hasn't happened when it has to so many people? Bit rude

Yes

One of my namesakes has recently bought a Mazda in Jackson, Ohio and I'm getting her warranty spam

Texan Me is an elderly MAGA who signs up to charities, is regularly phished and whose husband is a Knight of St Columba

Floridian Me is a Democrat and works at NASA

Rhodes Island Me lives in a gated community and has ordered china pieces from a company that specialises in selling single pieces to replace parts of tea sets and dinner sets

Missouri Me often buys from Bed Bath & Beyond

There are New Zealand, German and a variety of Irish Mes as well.

It gets quite tiresome

Oh my gosh. It's an exact repeat of the last headbanger on this topic. The two emails you typed are the SAME EMAIL in gmail. Yours. You're not getting anyone else's email. They are giving out the wrong address!

Trouble is my email defaults/remembers American David so I always have to double check now!

This is a big part of the problem: where something is autosaved/autofills, so nobody ever checks it again and just assumes that it must be right. Autosave and autofill make it very easy for you to reliably make the same mistake 1,000 times!

I'm amused at people getting angry at and accusing others who have been sent emails for them in error, when they contact them to make them aware. Would they prefer you just not to tell them that all their confidential info is coming to you? Do they think that criminals deliberately hack into their email and then kindly let them know about it, rather than keeping it under wraps and using it to commit crime?!

I do think it seems a bit foolish when people change their names for an email address, because the email address for their actual one is already taken, as opposed to adding a middle initial, town name, special extra word or whatever. I don't mean 'Rebecca' becoming 'Becky' or 'Jonathan' becoming 'Jon'; but if your name is Tracy Clark, choosing TraceyClarke @ email.com does seem to be setting yourself up for a fall when everybody knows your actual name spelling. I know a 'Carl Smith' who uses 'KarlS' in his email. I never understand that.

I have a long, obscure, difficult-to-spell Shakespearean-type word as part of my email address, which I think probably helps to avoid this, as (apart from nobody else using it or a similar one) nobody assumes and people type it out very carefully and slowly indeed before reading it back to me to check, rather than just hearing it and assuming that they will automatically know how to spell it - like you would when you have to enter a randomised activation key code for software or whatever.

I have an email/name twin, I don’t get much for him now but I either reply with the correct email address or forward it directly depending what it is. We’ve struck up a friendship of sorts, once every year or so, nice chap.

Oh it exists, I read it last year: Friends Don't Lie by Nell Pattison

My cousin had the opposite of that - he once managed to invite a random man to his wedding because he emailed Ian Lastname rather than Iain Lastname. I know it was my mum who corrected him, I don't know if Ian Lastname ever replied to tell him he had the wrong person.

This must be the same reason as me. I too was given an invite back in the day when gmail was first created.
To those telling me 'I don't get it' I most certainly do thank you very much. The sender is not making a spelling mistake.

I have a very early "first gen" Gmail account as a [email protected] and I can assure you all erroneous mail that comes into my inbox is as a result of the sender mistyping or the other version of me deliberately giving the wrong email out (in the case of the alternate me in Canada having a lot of debt).

Your exasperation on this thread is amazing 😂

Btw I also had the original pre-googlemail gmail address. I still receive emails to lizsmith and liz.smith, because
the
dot
makes
no
difference

What happens if you send an email to both of those addresses?

This is unbelievable. How are people still failing to understand that they are receiving emails because the sender has typed their email address in the "to" field?

How is this such a difficult concept to grasp?

but she does have [email protected] whereas mine is [email protected]

To Google, they are the same address.

They are the same address, to Google.

Gmail does not see dots, so the same string of letters with the dot is the same address as that string of letters without the dot.

The same.

Your address is both of those addresses, AND that string of letters with any number of dots anywhere in the string.
Your address.
Not someone else's.

That is why emails addressed like that are coming to you.

She doesn't randomly get some of your emails because there is or isn't a dot there.

Her actual real address will be something like firsttnamesurname and people are incorrectly typing one of the many dot variations of your address. Then they arrive to you.

The ones that come to you are the ones where someone has mistyped her email address. She does not have the no dots version of your email, merge or no merge, she can’t have because Gmail and Google mail were always the same thing. She’s getting the majority of her emails because those are the ones where her email address if typed correctly.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10313?sjid=8389892779698240463-EU#zippy=%2Cgetting-messages-sent-to-an-googlemailcom-address%2Cgetting-messages-sent-to-a-dotted-version-of-my-address

She is not emailing me, other people are emailing her. She absolutely does have the ' no dot' version.

You are correct it should not have been possible - but she does have [email protected] whereas mine is [email protected]. my Gmail address predates the introduction of googlemail addresses. ( I was a techy nerd in those days, so this was a point of pride). Which is why I suspect the glitch happened when the two address structures were merged together.

Has been happening consistently ( but only periodically) for 15-20 years...IE she is and has been getting the majority of her emails, but some still come to me.

I have the same name as I very very high up senator in the USA- I am Emma.smith @….
she is EmmaSmith so very close email address
and then I started getting secure messages from the US military that she oversees some funding for etc and approval documents etc and so I emailed her and forwarded them all on.

She tracked me down at work in the U.K. and rang me at work 😂to thank me and I reassured her I had deleted the emails and emptied the trash can etc. She was very nice but I think one of her assistants might have been in trouble. I had to do some other calls with some others and sign a document etc which was all fine and she sent me a lovely bunch of flowers and I haven’t had any more emails for her

Gmail and Googlemail are, and always were, interchangeable. She couldn’t have signed up with yourfirstnamelastname if you had yourfirstname.lastname because it’s the same address. Even if she used gmail.com and you used Googlemail.com. They’re still the same address. She’s just getting hers wrong.

I have this issue. About 20 years ago there were two types of Gmail accounts 'name.gmail.com' that in the UK you could get by being nominated ( by someone in the know), and slightly later open access in the UK to 'name.googlemail.co.uk' ... If I remember correctly it was because someone owned 'Gmail.co.uk'

A few years later this was resolved and the 'googlemail.co.uk' was merged back into the standard Gmail structure

I had the original 'Gmail.com' address, ever since this change I have followed the life of another woman with the same name as me. I am talking engagements, weddings, arrival of kids, volunteering etc... Her email address does not have 'dot' between first and second name, whereas mine does. Even when people have sent emails to the correct address, they can periodically come to me.