To contact the person using my email address?

[ChristmasStocckings]

For a while now some lady with the same name as me seems to have been accidentally using my email address. Its normally just her signing up for junk like marketing emails from clothing stores. However in the last month I have gotten some more personal ones like shopping and holiday booking invoices and today a medical invoice for an upcoming procedure.

We don't have a common name and with the amount of info I have about her I think I have found her on facebook. Would I be unreasonable to contact her and let her know? Or would that be too creepy or potentially backfire on me somehow?

I have at least three other Helens who think that they have my email address. One is in Florida, and two are in the UK, of which one is a moderately successful Instagram influencer who is offered all sorts of lovely stuff by PRs.

I usually ignore or return to sender but I have contacted one on one occasion, when she accidentally used my email address to sign her daughter up to Brownies. I received a confirmation email with her daughter's name, address, DOB etc. There was a mobile number on the email and I texted it to let her know.

The biggest culprit of doing this was my DH. Kept sending emails to me at .com when it should have been .co.uk

I can recommend Proton mail if anyone is looking for a new mail service that isn’t google or Microsoft.

Funnily enough I have just withdrawn from a spat on Baby Names where someone is insisting that it's absolutely fine to give your child a very common name + surname combination because administrative mix-ups ABSOLUTELY NEVER HAPPEN. She is getting rather cross about it. My inbox, which has just received yet another email from Vodafone Australia about 'my' bill, would disagree.

The other week I started getting salary reviews and budget proposals from some charity in America. I emailed the sender and they basically threatened me with legal action for receiving confidential information!?

Haha what, they mean sue themselves surely! I would have reported it to the charity directly, their staff should be more careful at checking email addresses etc before sending stuff.

Out of interest, from a GDPR point of view - I was fairly recently sent a very detailed fit note for one of my doppelgängers which included name, address, NHS number, details of recent illness. It seemed so sensitive that I found the surgery number and rang them to alert them. The receptionist checked the patient record and it transpired that the patient had given the wrong (my) email address. Would the surgery have been liable for a breach if I had reported to the information commissioner if the error was with the patient?

I have this too - but it only seems to be for credit agreements she has taken out. I’ve emailed the companies concerned so many times and they do nothing - I even raised a GDPR case and nothing. People don’t care - I now delete and block anything for her (apart from account stuff that I do exactly the same as pp and go in and change the login details - especially after I couldn’t sign up to next with my own email address as she’d already done so).

I gave up being polite and now just delete stuff on the whole

Yup. It isn't a mistake when it happens all the bloody time. I've had flights bookings, mortgage application (with all their financials), and most recently the confidential file for a FOSTER CHILD (which I immediately deleted after notifying the sender). I'm past caring.

I would contact, seems like a genuine mistake and she will be grateful

I have this same issue with a woman who thinks my mobile number- that I've had since about 1997 is hers. I've had calls to pick her son up from school, calls from her granny, calls from the garage to say her car was ready, one call from her farrier and it was annoying but amusing for a while. But then she got ill and I got texts from her workmates, calls from her GP, texts from her counsellor and the occupational health service about the report - and that was after they'd texted me to confirm her appointment and I'd told them this was not her number! Obviously I didn't know her number to call her and tell her but I did call her workplace and tell them to tell her - again. And it's been a while now but I don't know if that's because she's died or she's learnt her phone number.

@NotAnotherHelen that is an interesting point, as technically the surgery haven't sent it to the wrong address, just the one they have been given. Similarly though that's bound to happen at times and perhaps they should have some measures in place, like the websites where they send you a code to confirm you have access to the email address before you can proceed with registering etc. Would be interesting to know the legal view on that though.

I have an almost unique name - years ago someone mixed up me and the only other person with my name's email (a co.uk version with a .com type thing) and I did contact her. Then Facebook happened and we connected - she's lovely and we comment on each others timelines sometimes - makes for a bit of fun confusing friends

@scara I was still pondering how they were going to do that
Would love to be there when that case came before a judge

I've had this problem at work. We have the email address @Witchendswork.org.uk

Unfortunately there is also a school called witchendswork. They, I think are @witchendsword.ed.ac.uk or similar.

But sometimes parents assume it's org.uk, so we get emails. They're normally not too bad. I message straight back, tell them they've got the wrong address and delete it off the system.

However one of the governors for ages put their address down as that and I got several fairly confidential pieces of info. Some of which, due to the aspect of my work weren't totally obvious until I'd started reading. This took about 18 months of me emailing to resolve.
Then I got one for a class dojo-a password and username for a specific class. (again intended for this specific governor)
This was the point I decided enough was enough, I emailed the class dojo website, and also the safeguarding/GDPR lead for the school, who was also the head, got their address off the website.

I had a lovely email back from class dojo saying they'd flagged it, and they had altered the password etc.
But I heard not a peep from the school, although I haven't had a wrong email since.

I am amazed by how lax the data protection is at so many organisations.

I had threatening e-mails from Vodafone Australia (I am in the UK) I emailed them to let them know it was nothing to do with me but they ignored me. They were mailing me details of some person using my e-mail - including address and other details. I logged an online complaint with the Australian Data Protection registrar which woke them up and stopped it.

I keep getting thanks from a charity I don't contribute to. This has happened several times but though they apologise each time they do fuck all to actually sort it out.

A woman in New York repeatedly uses mine. I've not worked out her name so haven't been able to compLain to her. Worst was when she used it for a group message about a baby shower.
I politely asked to be removed after the first few messages and was ignored, and after waking to 100s of messages I was decidedly ruder.
She often doesn't get her party invitations from that set of friends, including zoom parties during lockdown. But she also doesn't get the invoices from her caterer either.
She seems very popular though.

I have had a Hotmail address since the beginning of time and my name combination is quite common as in both names are popular, there is one lay who must have the same name as me who frequently uses my email.
I did once reply to an email to explain what had happened but nothing changed. I still have the email but don’t use it so all her emails go to a unread inbox

This happens to me as well. I know all about my doppelganger’s multiple attempts to get a job at Wetherspoons, where she lives, I’ve had her mortgage details, her taste in bodycon dresses, the social media she attempts to sign up to which I then change the password on or close down....my email address is [email protected] and I am guessing hers is the same but with a number maybe - we have the same name. I can understand shops or solicitors taking her email address and getting it wrong but I can’t understand when she inputs it wrongly herself, like for a social media account. You have to put it in twice for heaven’s sake!
Anyway re your question OP I once got something with her mobile on so I texted her nicely and it did stop for a bit but I still get things sometimes. I also reply to senders if they are official - like dentists and solicitors - telling them I am not the Flying Apples they are looking for.

You see this is what concerns me on the current thread in Site Stuff about Privacy. Anyone at MNHQ could potentially find us all on Facebook as they have our email addresses which usually contains our real name and they have an IP address which could pinpoint at the very least our country. I'm not comfortable with HQ having this information about me.

@Dancingwithdaftness

You see this is what concerns me on the current thread in Site Stuff about Privacy. Anyone at MNHQ could potentially find us all on Facebook as they have our email addresses which usually contains our real name and they have an IP address which could pinpoint at the very least our country. I'm not comfortable with HQ having this information about me.

You need a burner email. Go to mail.com, create a free account under a fake name and set it to forward to your real account. Use that on Mumsnet and similar sites.

I have a work gmail address that is a combination of my line of work and sector, so for example: sectorengineergmail.com. There is someone else who uses sectorengineeringgmail.com and I've receveied a few messages that were meant for them and I think I've once typed the wrong one in. It's quite a small sector within a large industry where if you don't know someone, you probably know of them, so each time we've just forwarded the message on to the other and laughed about it. If it were me, I'd rather you let me know about it OP!

@Dancingwithdaftness

You see this is what concerns me on the current thread in Site Stuff about Privacy. Anyone at MNHQ could potentially find us all on Facebook as they have our email addresses which usually contains our real name and they have an IP address which could pinpoint at the very least our country. I'm not comfortable with HQ having this information about me.

I don't have a Facebook account but when I did I didn't use my actual name. You can mitigate against this if you want to.

Facebook is an evil organisation that doesn't care about UK law.

@Dancingwithdaftness I always have an 'official' email address with my name in for job applications etc, and then another for registering for stuff without my name in. Also IP wise some providers automatically change the IP address periodically for added security, sure it would be easy enough for someone to find you if they had the time, knowledge and resources- but if you're that worried you could use a VPN. I would imagine the biggest threat to peoples privacy on here would be someone hacking and releasing people's info and relating it to their username, but hopefully they have the relevent security in place to reduce the likelihood of that.

I have had an American company sending me emails, including an invoice for one of their clients, a new sign up. This client has the same unusual first name as me, yet despite me sending several emails telling them to phone their client to get the correct email address, they still sent them to me. I even explained that I couldn't exactly be using their groundcare services given I was overseas.

In the end, I wrote a post on their FB page, highlighting exactly what they were doing. This stopped the emails, although I noticed they deleted that post. Probably didn't want to scare off any new customers. But I think it only worked because they could then see my profile and realise that yes, I did indeed live in the UK and not California.

I had enough details to be able to find this lady's address, and also an email address for her husband. I should have emailed him, then they could have given the company a rocket themselves.

I've had this with another lady's phone bills and some rather entertaining neighbourhood newsletters. We were also mistaken for one another on social media. We finished up having quite a long email chat, as we work in not dissimilar fields, and now follow each other on Twitter etc.

I had similar. I had emails with all kinds of personal information on them and she also set up accounts using my email address in error. I took a chance and emailed the email address the same as mine but ending co.uk instead of com and it turned out it was her - she didn’t realise the ending made a difference. The emails have now stopped!