If your email address is [email protected] ...

[chocbelli]

... do you often get emails for other people with the same name as you?

I've had a firstname.surname gmail address for about 30 years, with no bother, but in the last 3-4 years I've been getting random but genuine emails for people with the same name - e.g. mailing list subscriptions, an EPC certificate, a building insurance email, emails from solicitors or accountants which include personal info. They are addressed to my firstname and surname, but include postal addresses in other parts of the UK or different countries. I assume these people must have similar emails e.g. firstname.surname1 or firstname.surnameWithDifferentSpelling but somehow mistyped them when filling out an online form.

Does this happen to you? My name is not a common one at all, but is clearly common enough for me to have doppelgangers around the world with poor recollection of their own email addresses.

I'm very curious as to why this just started happening in the last 3-4 years, when I've had this address for ever and ever! 🤷‍♀️

There is an American guy with the Twitter handle "@ JohnLewis" who gets tagged into customer complaints about the department store all the time, and doubly so at Christmas when everyone logs on to complain about the "woke Christmas advert". He deals with it pretty well.

Former PM Liz Truss is "@ TrussLiz" because when she joined Twitter in August 2009, before she was even a backbencher, "@ LizTruss" was already taken. When Truss was PM, her namesake had quite a bit of fun. I think she got tagged by a few foreign governments at some point.

Yes, fairly frequently. Someone with my name has a job where confidentiality is definitely required. I've had attachments with case notes, confidential discussions around welfare concerns etc. I don't read the detail and have always replied immediately to tell the sender what's happened.
On a lighter note I've been included in hen party planning messages and had a recent conversation bsck amd forward with a contractor who had done a whole load of work for my namesake.

It's a pain in the arse.

I think I preferred when everyone conversed by landline or letter 😉

My email address is firstnameinitial@common provider. For years I was getting emails from an Australian bank telling me I had reached my overdraft limit, or a payment had gone through. They were addressed to somebody with the same first name and initial of last name. Eventually I tracked a likely candidate via Facebook (unusual surname) and sent a PM saying she might want to check the email her bank was using. The emails did stop after that.

Yes, I have [email protected] and the woman with [email protected] used to give out my email address all the time. She forwarded things from her work email to me, her boyfriend sent me cat pics, she signed up for sky TV with it and I even got the booking email for her wedding venue!

Does anyone else remember when capital letters would also count differently in an email address?

My first one was something along the lines of Tarkan999 at domain dot com and if someone emailed me using tarkan999 instead I wouldn't get it. I'm not sure if someone else had the name with the lower case letter or not though.

Not gmail but work. Someone with a different first name but same initial and the exact surname left my employer the week before I started so IT signed me up with her old email address. We live very different lives. Mint Velvet. Dinner dances. Golfing weekends. I wonder if she ever did any work.
More seriously there's an HR woman with the exact same name (I'm very common), whose email has an additional number. I've had contracts, p45's, grievances etc.

A few years ago we had a spate of calls on the (barely used) landline for a computer repair shop. I tracked down the shop a couple of miles away and spotted that the paint had flaked off the number 8 so that it looked like a 3 and they were now advertising our number above the shop.

I’ve just remembered that DH stopped using his Hotmail address because there is a preacher in India with the same name and a huge following so most of DH’s emails were requests for prayers. DH uses his work email for everything now, don’t know what he’s going to do when he retires.

Not with my main email and real name but I have a few gmail accounts used for projects in the past – one is grandma.surname @ gmail and I get THOUSANDS of emails. Every grandma with that surname seems to think it’s their address. A lot of Floridian cat food bills.

We are talking about where a typo has basically been made. Not spam. So in your example, more likely would be the Rachel with the S in the email address forgot that when writing/typing her email address in or giving it out to people. So then she doesn't receive her email, but the person who has email address she gave out receives them instead. All genuine emails, just going to the wrong address.

There's someone who has my name but spelt slightly differently and I get so many emails meant for her. I know her full name, address, who she banks with, her phone company, her mobile number. She also never pays her bloody bills so I'm constantly getting letters about debts and bailiffs. I was thinking about sending her an angry email but then worried she might retaliate by signing me up for even more crap.

I heard a radio show about how this is a common issue for gmail addresses about a year ago. I've never had any problems with my name-based Hotmail address.

Yes something similar has happened to me.

Yes. Lots.

I am apparently the owner of an enormous pedigree dog with a serious vet habit in Arizona.

There are various others, like confirmations for spa days, and contracts for actors. Anytime I’ve tried to explain that someone has erroneously given them my email address, there is so much confusion on the other end that I’ve just stopped bothering.

A lot of the time these are not actually errors but attempts to identify “live” email addresses for mailing lists. They send out a seemingly important but bogus message such as a job offer, medical appointment or “pay your car tax by tomorrow or get impounded” email hoping that the recipient will be nice and email back to say “wrong address” as they feel bad that the genuine recipient will miss out. The senders then know the email address is live and those are worth more than unverified ones which may not be in active use.

Basically, don’t respond. Just delete and block.

@Needspaceforlego I thought the same but honestly she is just a chaotic person who seems to lurch from one bad decision to the next. Took me 10 minutes to find her online, she has a totally open social media profiles. I know where she lives, the names of her kids, the schools they go to, everything! Because our names, dates of birth and geographic location were so similar (before I changed my name) I think poor checking processes at the loans company and the bailiffs were to blame.
She is definitely to blame for not being able to type her own email address correctly however!

Yes!

And it started happening a few years ago, out of the blue

So my email is

sugar.spice@ gmail.com

And the U.S. lady's email is

sugarspice@ gmail.com

And all her flipping emails come to me

I've tried sorting it with gmail, to no avail

Crazy 🤪

That’s useful to know. I’ve had my gmail account for 20 years, so it would be pain to switch, but maybe it would be worth it.

Never happened to me, but I doubt there’s anyone else in the world with my exact first name, surname combination.

Who would you suggest?

If your email is first name.surname at one of the big providers, I strongly urge you to get a second, more anonymous handle at one of the providers who take privacy secrecy. There are a bunch of them

I've had my email address since 2001. I wish I'd chosen something more anonymous but the thought of changing it now and EVERYTHING its linked to, fills me with horror!

@Catinabeanbag Almost, but not quite. Gmail doesn't direct your emails to someone else if you're using the email address you have actually legitimately created.

If the stranger was already signed up with the email address [email protected], then your colleague was never issued with the email address [email protected], for the dots-are-irrelevant reason you've noted.

Maybe when your colleague signed up, it was actually [email protected], but she forgot to note the difference.

I once emailed someone which was first name.surname thinking that I was emailing my dad but I was actually emailing someone with his exact same name.

The really bizarre thing is that he also had a daughter with my exact name so when he replied, he actually thought it was his daughter. I was trying to send details about a property I was going to buy to my dad and this other random person with the same name as my dad emailed back and asked why was I thinking about moving as of course he thought it was his daughter. It was so bizarre!

My problematic email address is many years old. I estimated 30 years in my OP, but Gmail has only existed since 2004, so it must be 21 years. I now only use it with friends and family, and I have a much more anonymous address that I use for other things.

Yahoo has existed since 1997, so I do have an address with them that is around 28 years old in the form firstname_lastname. I never get any stray emails to that account, so the underscore must help.

An issue I've noticed with Gmail is that when I send to a mistyped address then, even if it bounces, Gmail will auto-suggest the mistyped address for ever more. That means it is very easy to repeat the same mistake. There is probably a setting somewhere to prevent it, but the default setting encourages errors.

Oh I had similar but on my phone, the person trying to reset their password must have been perplexed that they were asking for a text to reset their password were getting nothing as the phone number that was getting it was mine. Loads of texts.

I’ve had quite a few. I gave an account in my single name as didn’t change my professional registration. That account had someone who used my address to register at her old college alumni organisation so I was getting loads of emails from University of California Davis. I got quite friendly with the registrar at one stage. Then a message from one of her friend wishing me a happy birthday but she also gets lots and lots from the Democratic Party, not sure whether this is spam or what. They all go to spam. My scam folder was in over drive during the election.

I also had someone sign up to EBay using my other address, which has an extra digit. It took ages and culminating with copying and pasting a receipt which included her address into a message via her email account for her to stop denying she was using my address for her bid information. I stopped her drop box application though.
DH gets periodic requests from an estate agent asking for rent for a physio practice in Australia. He writes back every time.