to want to call the woman who has used my email address to order stuff again?!

[Rainbowshine]

Someone who has the same name as me keeps using my email address when ordering online. She registered with one company in July so I called the co to get them to inform her and also to check there was no fraud involved.

There's been quite a few more since then (about ten retailers). Today she's used my email to register with a different retailer. This time there's a phone number and her address on the confirmation email.

I rang the retailer to ensure no fraud but right now I want to ring her up and say stop using my email address please! Am I being unreasonable to expect my email address not to be used by a random stranger and to want to tell them to stop it? Kind of a WWYD but it's driving me nuts.

I think it probably happens when people get confused because their work email is [email protected], and they forget that their personal account is [email protected] because they're sharing a server with millions of others.

I've had a gmail account since the early invitation-only days and I get a few misaddressed emails on my main account even though I have an unusual first.last combination, and a lot more on my married name account which is more commonplace.

I wouldn't worry for yourself, she's the one with more to lose as you could end up with her passwords etc if she did 'forgot password' on those accounts. She must have trouble logging in too.

I'd ring/email her.

I get gmails for a MysteriousThamster@gmail (fake example), where people have obviously forgotten the T and I just forward them onto her. We're pretty much friends now, on different sides of the ocean!

I have this too - but be aware that more than 1 person can use the same email address apparently. I set up [email protected] and get emails for someone with the same name as me. I have emailed the companies she registers with but they say they can't do anything as I need her password or registration details to cancel her contract.

I contacted hotmail who said there is nothing they can do as sometimes more than 1 person can have the same address - it is a glitch in the system and nothing they can do about it

we have had this we have a family email as wellas sepwrate ones.

the family is dpsfirstnameandmyfirstname@... anyway dps first name is one if those names with a few known apellings so thete is obviously a couple with the same email only his version of the first name is spelt differently by one letter but clearly he has friends that spell it wrong!

i just emailed back telling them they must have spelt the name wrong. its just someone using an i rather than an a in the name. simple mistake and i got a very polite thankyou back :)

When I first got Broadband I was with Orange and had a very common maiden name, their email addresses that were generated went FIRSTNAME@FIRSTINITIAL&SURNAME.orangehome.co.uk (or something).

I soon started getting emails for various people with the same initial and surname, both male and female. The only contact details I had for them to tell them I was getting their mail was their email address ... which bounced back into my own inbox.

gintastic,

log onto your email using gintastic@ gmail and your password. Its the same email. Likewise gin.tastic@. The other person cannot log into your account or get your emails unless they know your password. It doesnt send emails to both inboxes. And there are very few duplicate inboxes - only those created in beta phase (some 7/8 years ago I think.). Morelikely that you have someone who has created gin.p.tastic@ and has fogotten the P when signing up to services.

Also some people now have @googlemail, but get confused!

@googlemail

and

@gmail

will go to the same inbox.

I can use either.

Well I never. Didn't know that. Guess there's not much I can do there then...

On the upside I use another email address for my married name and will definitely be adding some punctuation into that one now I know I can!

I'm so pleased I've got a seriously oddball surname...

Go to the google help page and there it explains how their email addresses work:

Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address; they'll all go to your inbox, and only yours. In short:
[email protected] = [email protected]
[email protected] = [email protected]
[email protected] = [email protected]
All these addresses belong to the same person. You can see this if you try to sign in with your username, but adding or removing a dot from it. You'll still go to your account.

So if this other person has even a similar email address, it would seem that you will continue to get her mail until one of you relents and sets up a different email address.

Its a PITA but is reasonably easily sorted

Well, I've had [email protected] since 1999 (I think - was definitely using it when I lived abroad and that was around then). I ain't changing it!

1999? I got my gmail address pretty early (mates with IT bods), but I'm sure it was the early noughties rather than the nineties.

I digress.

I've had gmail since 2004 - pretty sure it had only been out a few months then.

I keep getting other people's emails too. I've got someone in England, someone in Ireland and at least one person in the US who gives people my email address. I've had credit card statements, pigsback vouchers (Irish equivalent of Groupon), emails from various websites that someone's child is trying to sign up for, conference booking receipts with full addresses on etc. And a shit load of spam.

You're probably all right, I've got a rubbish memory :/) might have been gin.tastic@yahoo I was using back then. I've definitely have gmail ages as a geek friend sent me a very early invite, but I just can't remember. More wine maybe...

this keeps happening to me with my gmail account too!

it's incredibly annoying. the other person signed up to facebook using my e-mail address which meant that I could have accessed it all and put anyhting on there! :-S

I got an email from a council finance officer recently, saying I owed council tax, giving all my personal details, where I used to live, how much I owed, saying I needed to pay or else etc. I called the council to say I had never lived in that council area and wtf was she on about. It turned out they had emailed [email protected] instead of [email protected]. Very unprofessional!

Are you sure she is doing this?

I had a bit of a saga with a hotel sending me confirmation of a room and private dining.

Emailed them it was wrong

They emailed me back to appologise for not sending the email to my address.

Called them again, they appologised for not sending me the e-mail, it took about 2 weeks to finally sort it out.

My email address is very different to the one she used. Our given and surnames are the same.

At one point they sent an email to both addresses, at this point I could contact her and say what information had been disclosed to me, and what I had done to try to sort it out.

The day after I got another email thanking me for my telephone call (it wasn't me, it was my namesake) and confirming something else.

I have serval emails.

One for junk and spam mail
One for family and friends
One for payments ( that is a very long one with lots of number uppercase and lowercase letters)

Most email adresses are so similar.

I used to get this too, a lot - I have firstname.lastname@gmail and have done since beta days. I generally wait until someone is cc'd into an email supposedly for that person and email the third party asking them to let my namesake know and to say please stop it. I've been quite diligent an it happens relatively rarely these days.

OP, did you call yet? I have dreamed about being able to phone one of my namesakes and have a rant at them