Someone else with my email address?

[roseapothecary]

My email address is my first name and a number. A few years ago, I started getting occasional emails addressed to someone with the same first name as me. I've continued getting a couple a month, including sometimes from her bank, and also when I have tried to register on some websites, it will insist I have an account and password reset emails will come addressed to her.
I thought it was someone with a similar email address who mistyped it occasionally. But, a couple of things recently have me worried. Firstly I tried to log on to the student finance website, and it said I couldn't use that email as it was a shared email. Then an few days ago I got an email for her from a shop about an online order she had made. But they had just replied to her email, which I could see in the thread, which was sent from my email address.

I've done loads of googling and can't find anything. Logically, we can't have the same email address as then I would get all of her emails and not just a few, but I really don't understand.
Has anyone got any idea what's going on?

Have you checked your email address on the Have I been pwned website to check it hasn’t been breached, that could be a start. Also gmail email addresses can be slightly different as you can ignore the dots or add some in

I used to have a gmail account that was for example [email protected], someone else had an email that was [email protected]. I started getting their confirmation emails when they purchased things online, emails from their bank, emails from social media etc. I even got a reset password email from their paypal, I could have used that to access their paypal and spend their money.

I messaged them on instagram with a screen shot of one of their emails where it clearly showed their email address so I could show what was happening. They hadn’t been receiving my emails. They ended up having to change their email address, a few things they did forget about, I still get the occasional email from hulu.

This happens to me weekly. As far as I can tell it's just idiots who can't get their own emails right. I usually reset the password, then log in and check that they haven't used my address. If they have I know it's fraud (hasn't happened yet). If they haven't, I change the email to something random and let them sort it out.

They may have used a contact us form and filled in your email address

I've had similar a few times and for one who kept signing up to restaurant and shop loyalty account, I followed the account link and changed their email to stopusingmyemail @ address.com.

I got emails for someone else about food deliveries from supermarkets so used the online chat to contact the supermarket who said they didn't have an account registered to my email address so somehow whatever she was putting in their system was getting changed to my email address

I did end up sending a letter to her address telling her what was happening and it hasn't happened since.

Hopefully it is just someone getting their email wrong. I was thrown by how she seemed to send an email from my account though? I will check that pwned website thank you. I can't get in touch with her on social media as there are loads of people with her name.