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 had this with someone in Australia, had her address from things she ordered but also got work ones, found her on Facebook but couldn't message and she ignored friend request so eventually after getting fed up of them I replied to one of the work ones in capital letters stating this is not soandso in Australia please tell her to correct her email address! They seem to have stopped now.

I have a made up email address so i have never had this happen, something like Lem.MMA345@ its a pain having to recite it several times but i have never had somebody elses email.

We have a gmail account for our business with the idea that nobody else could then grab it and use it. There is a woman in France with a similar business name to us who has decided that it's her email address and keeps giving it out. I have lots of fun replying to people that contact her as she's been told multiple times to stop giving it out to people.

When I logged in today there was a new catalogue and price list from a rep, I replied to say please stop contacting us, we don't want to trade with you. No idea how important this supplier is to her but if she wants to do business with them then she should give them the correct contact details.

My sister has this problem. She contacted the lady in question and she was mortified. Apparently her email was First dot last name @ gmail dot com. And Google omit the dot between the first and last name.

Googlemail and Gmail (the differemce can be a source of confusion in itself) ignore the dot before the at. This can be useful. If your email address is jane.doe@ you can also use ja.nedoe@ or janed.oe@ and they will still come to you. You can use this to identify where junkmail is coming from, or to sign up two accounts to a service using the same email address for both.

I had this when I suddenly started receiving wedding quotes! I found her on facebook, same name as me and she was very grateful. Her actual email address had a 1 after the name but the wedding venues hadn't written it down properly.

@DogInATent

My sister has this problem. She contacted the lady in question and she was mortified. Apparently her email was First dot last name @ gmail dot com. And Google omit the dot between the first and last name.

Googlemail and Gmail (the differemce can be a source of confusion in itself) ignore the dot before the at. This can be useful. If your email address is jane.doe@ you can also use ja.nedoe@ or janed.oe@ and they will still come to you. You can use this to identify where junkmail is coming from, or to sign up two accounts to a service using the same email address for both.

You can also use a + on Gmail for identifying spam sources. Anything after the + is ignored, so myname@ gmail.com and myname+twitter@ gmail.com go to the same place (as does my.name+facebook@ gmail.com). Handy hint I learned around the time GDPR came in!

I have this problem!!

I get DVLA car tax receipts, restaurant bookings, electoral roll registrations the lot for one lady.

I honestly don't know how anybody doesn't know their email address, especially if your IT competent enough to be buying/booking things online. It drives me crackers.

My maiden name is relatively common, and being an early adopter, I have [email protected]

Over the years I have had multiple people try and use it. One had all her school stuff going to it, and I phoned the school and asked them to tell her to stop it. She kept on, and mysteriously found her online shopping kept getting cancelled. She has obviously now worked out what her own email address is.

I've also bought hoodies from the US, opened a fortnite account and had a fairly serious gambling problem over the years...

Oh, and I nearly went on a lovely skiing holiday over half term. I did fess up to the travel agent about that one, but I have ID in the correct name and I suppose could have travelled...

Ive had this several times. At first I contacted the person but it still didn't stop so I just unsubscribe to things and sometimes contact the company. Most recently I received pictures of their approx 5 year old child from a photography company. I contacted that company and asked them to contact the school as I'm sure it would be breaking some protection laws or something. As the school wouldn't change when I contacted them directly.

as pp's have said, it happens a lot with gmail. I've had all sorts for lots of different people, sometimes i leave it and other times i get in touch. I once got someone's house purchase contract!!

Omg, this has happened to me for years with a first.surname gmail account! My name is weirdly popular and it’s happened with multiple people.
I’ve had someone’s gynaecology bill from a Texas clinic, quotes for a new Lexus in Florida, someone’s homework from St Maarten in the Caribbean! Madness.
I got an Airbnb confirmation once, and because they’d given the emails of the other guests I was able to contact them to tell them the lead traveller had made a mistake, but I had access to a lot of personal details.
Once someone linked their telephone number so I texted them and it was a 16 year old with a mad attitude in New York.

I’ve contacted Gmail before and they’ve said there’s nothing they can do

Someone did this to me years ago, in fact they even set up an Amazon account with my email address when I already had a different account in my name with the same email address. I asked Amazon how this was even possible, but apparently it was then (10+ years ago).

It was some Tim nice but Dim in Surrey and I found out all sorts of details about him, oh, and his kids, because I was regularly sent emails by their class representative, in spite of me replying on more than one occasion to say that the email had reached the wrong person.

Because of the Amazon orders I eventually had his home address, and was going to write to the dimwit to let him know of the extent of his error but then it stopped. He must have realised that he couldn't actually get into his email account, at some point.

I always check I've got an email order confirmation when I order anything and I just don't understand how someone could make this error over such a long period of time.

I share my very unusual name with a multimillionaire and, unsurprisingly, we have very similar email addresses. By coincidence, we also ended up living in the same postcode, me at 99 X Crescent, her at 99 Y Crescent, sharing a personal trainer, doctor, pharmacy, even hospital consultant. I've had nearly 20 years of wrong numbers, emails, prescriptions, appointments, even mail (including contracts) sent to me. I even had a very large cheque sent to me by mistake. And I once got a accused of identity theft (apparently she had just left and I walked in with a card in the same name). I guess people assume there can't be 2 Hildegard Beauregards not my actual name obviously in the world, especially not in the same postcode.

This happens with my gmail account. I got [email protected] when it was in beta testing. I'm reluctant to give it up. I get emails from 2 other accounts, one in the UK and one in Canada

I have a completely different gmail account now for anything important or sensitive.

I get this with my Gmail, but as it's sent to my Gmail I don't know who to notify that I am getting their email, so I have to let the sender know.

So far I have invoices for ice, for someone in the US, invoices for physiotherapy and mobile phone bills for someone in South Africa, overdue bill notices for gas for someone in England, minutes of school meetings, for someone in New Zealand...

I don't have a particularly common surname, so I feel sorry for anyone who does, as they must get way more.

I once got an email from the CEO of a television company and he did thank me for letting him know that it was sent to the wrong person, but ignored my cheeky P.S. request asking if they had any good jobs going at said TV company.

I have one who lives between Brighton and Monmouth who can’t for the life of her give her email address out properly. I’ve had invoices for her new kitchen, queries about renting her parking space, estate agent documents when she was getting valuations, physiotherapist, theatre tickets and even appliances she’d bought in store being registered to my John Lewis account.

There’s also a lovely lady in Virginia Beach who probably wants to be a more active member of her community garden association but never gets the emails about their activities, and has a phone contract with Verizon.

Change the pass words and set up 3 way verification code (email address, password and mobile phone number) that’s what I did and haven’t had a issue since.

Oh I didn't realise that by 'a while' you actually meant a couple of years! In that case yes perhaps contact her.

I was thinking that if it were me then I'd realise soon enough because when I didn't receive my holiday confirmation I'd chase it up and check the email address they had for me.

Obviously this mystery name-doppelgänger isn't quite as organised!

I'd let her know and change the password otherwise you'll be locked out if she changes it first

I thought of this thread today when I got an email from America - I have a name doppelgänger buying a house over there and the person doing the house inspection sent me his contract and details.

Given it was quite important, I emailed them back a polite note asking them to double check their client details.

Even more spooky, DH are trying to buy a house at the moment and I was waiting for an email from our solicitor so I was doubly confused.