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

exactly this!

I have this too! My gmail is my first name . surname. Yet I get emails for 2 other women who have my name too. Their email addresses do not have a dot separating their first and last name.
One is in the UK and one in the States. I live in another country.
The last one I got for the 'other me' in the UK was from a bloke called Gordon confirming our rendezvous outside Battersea Power Station. Ending the email with 2 kisses.
The USA me bought lingerie (I got the emailed shop receipt) and then stayed in a hotel (I got a hotel email confirmation).
I kind of live vicariously through these two same name sharers, and I often wonder if they ever receive emails meant for me.
If so they are probably greatly disappointed and bored 🤣

No, the sender typed the incorrect address, because they can’t have surname.name if you have surnamename. In gmail they’re the same address.

I had this with a lady who was active in a homeowners' association in Florida. I kept getting emails about dog poo.

My email is surname.name@gmail, the past year I have been getting emails addressed to surnamename@gmail. I clicked on the email and the dot was missing. Gmail does ignore dots, the sender typed the correct address but it just gets delivered to me.

Someone used my gmail address on a gaming site. I tried several times to get the site to stop emailing me all his/her considerable progress.

Eventually I got so fed up with the spam from them that I requested a lost pass word reset link which of course came to me. I then deleted his account which solved the problem nicely

My brother couldn't get the email address he wanted so went with a slight misspelling and dropped the e at the end. My dear old mum cannot get this right and has been emailing very long involved family missives to the correct spelling of his name for years.

He politely emailed her back many times to explain he is not her son. She still manages to get it wrong. They've developed a friendship. We call him the un-son and it's a miracle he hasn't been invited for Xmas dinner.

I’ve had this. The person they should have gone to had the same Christian name, and surname, my surname is unusual in the Uk but not in theUS and the sender of the emails was a US realtor and the recipient was their PA I think as the emails were usually instructions to arrange viewings and such. I kept replying g that they had the wrong person but the emails kept coming for some time.

@WiddlinDiddlin hey will they remember you in their wills????

Too late, you're part of the family now! Just join in.

I am guilty of this! DB started work in a global company and only uses a work email address not a personal email address (far too busy and important to check two email inboxes apparently 🙄) His first name is able to be shortened but in our family he is known by his longer first name (think David and Dave). I sent a voucher for his birthday to his work email but he uses the shortened first name as his work email address, luckily his American colleague David forwarded it to him. Trouble is my email defaults/remembers American David so I always have to double check now!

I've had this too with the same person for years and feel like I know her really well. I have replied and told people several times but when the same person emails me then, I just delete it.

… actually, it’s turns out I’m wrong! Google does in fact disregard all dots.

Most mail systems do not do this, but it turns out it’s part of the SMTP standard that the receiving system is allowed to interpret addresses how it likes.

Who knew…

Gmail does ignore the dots sarasmith@gmail can also be s.a.rasmith@gmail

also you can use + I like using Janesmith+bills@gmail +dentist etc

Because OP is her personal assistant after all....

Personally I'd just mark the address as spam so that they stop hitting your inbox then move on.

Ah -
"Note: If you use Gmail through work, school or another organisation (such as yourdomain.com or yourschool.edu), dots do change your address."

So it varies depending on how you use gmail!
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en-GB

I have a gmail address that people regularly get wrong because they miss out the initial before my last name. I have taken to spelling it out with spaces e.g. firstname a lastname and writing 'please note the third a before my last name'. In spite of this, my recent job offer went to the person without the extra initial.

Gmail does ignore dots. Most other email providers do not and see it as a normal text character.
This has confused countless people...

No, it doesn’t ignore dots either. There is a set of characters that are legal for email addresses, and it will precisely match the address you supply to the one it delivers to.

If you try to send an email to an address that contains a character that is not in the legal set, it will tell you it’s an invalid address.

if you own firstnamesurname you also own firsname.surname and surnamefirstname and surname.firstname

No you don't own the letters in a different order - how would that work? Gmail just ignores any dots in the string of text. It doesn't rearrange letters.

Every time this subject comes up I am rather surprised at how many people struggle to understand it.

I get this too. I have someone who thinks that their email address should be nice and easy as FirstnameLastname, and doesn't understand the logic that if someone already has that, they can't just have it. Early on, the other person attempted to 'take' my email account, by trying to go through the recovery process to reset passwords etc. After that I stopped being helpful. When she signs up for accounts, if the confirmation email includes a "this isn't me" link, I always follow it to unlink the address from the account. If it doesn't I will actually go into the account, reset the passwords and then delete the whole account.

It isn’t a problem with gmail dots. This comes up every time. It’s the sender putting in the wrong address. [email protected] is the same address as [email protected] or [email protected].

If [email protected] gives his email to someone who pays no attention to the M, the first John Smith will get it. Its user error on the sender’s part (and sometimes down to people who don’t know their own email address).

Google doesn’t send emails randomly to anyone who’s vaguely John Smith related though depending on how it feels.

I doubt it's a problem with gmail dots because someone else could not register a gmail address that was the string of letters that is your email address with any dots in anywhere.

So if you are lizsmith@gmail, you have also claimed l.i.z.s.m.i.t.h@gmail , liz.smith, liz.s.mith, l.i.zsmith etc. No-one else can have that as their email address.

They may incorrectly tell other people that their email is one of those, but it won't be.

I get ones that are reversed first and last name e.g. I'm lizsmith and the other person is smithliz but for some reason gives out their email address as lizsmith. It's usually obviously that person. I wouldn't know this from any of the emails I receive, but I have deduced it from replies and CCs.

I've had this too, and equally find it amusing. It's a Gmail glitch for some (if you own firstnamesurname you also own firsname.surname and surnamefirstname and surname.firstname) but others, like op, it's a typo.

My sisters DP has this exact same problem. Say his email is MichaelThomas, there's another Michael who lives in America (I think he's from Texas), whose email is MichaelTomas.

Our Michael regularly gets emails for Texan Michael, of varying levels of importance. He was able to piece together the correct email from the contents of the messages "Dear Michael Tomas," etc, and get in touch with Texan Michael. He did get some acknowledgement, but it was rather rude and "Of course I give people the correct email!"

Nowadays, if it looks actually important, he forwards it to Texan Michael, if it doesn't, he deletes it.