To ask about emails you've received, when someone has the same name as you but puts in your email address...

[TheWristBoundLatexBitch]

I've seen about this before, someone with the same name as you accidentally puts your email address down instead of theirs. Usually it's because there is a . involved and missed.

A few months ago I got an email from the police thanking me for my report about a covid breach (I emailed back saying the name was correct but I had not reported anyone).

Now to today. I apparently have purchased and insured a dog in America, I've also signed up for alerts for all missing dogs in the area!!! Again we have the same first name and last name, but I live in the uk and definitely don't own a dog! This is one of them emails that you cannot reply too, and the number is (of course) American. I am not calling America, so the alerts will stay. (I've had 6 emails in the last hour about registering the dog, what dog it is and how I've set these alerts up!

My brother's email address is first name, middle initial, surname ie. Jon A Smith so jonasmith@emailprovider. (Not his real name.)

He discovered there's an elderly lady called Jona Smith in the US when he started receiving her medical appointments and test results. He kept replying to them so the doctors would know she hadn't received them and that they were sending confidential information to the wrong person but it wasn't until one of her relatives sent an email and he was replied to them explaining that it wasn't her email address that it stopped.

I once started getting loads of emails about new messages and "likes" I had received on plenty of fish. I was single at the time and was adamant my friends had set me up an account 😂. Luckily I was able to log into the account using my email address and saw the mobile number it was registered to, so sent them a quick text. We had a laugh about it in the end.

I got a hen do itinerary, with the standard hen do style request for money!

I have loads of these. Relatively common first and last name but an early adopter, so I have [email protected]

So far

School reports, hen do invite, multiple Tesco orders, British netball registration, fortnite account, gambling accounts (got those cancelled PDQ), holiday bookings, job interviews, car hire, IKEA recipes, you name it.

Multiple people from all over the world, and as my first name is unisex, it really is all sorts.

Used to annoy me, but I do find it mildly amusing now. One woman I did track down as I was receiving medical stuff. She carried on using my email address for online shopping and eventually I cancelled a couple and she seems to have learnt her email address now.

Had a college of policing online learning account recovery email yesterday actually.

How do people not know their own email address?!?

I don't use my real name for my email address, and if I did, I know my name's unique. There are 4 people in the UK with my surname. I haven't found anyone anywhere else.

Thankfully don't have a really common name so has never happened to me!

Oh this is happening to me! It's been about two years. Confirmations of returns or orders, confirmations of orders, queries from a cricket club about what types of glasses I wanted for "my" event there. I replied to the cricket club to tell them I'm not who they think I am, and to ask the other person with my name to stop using my email address! I even googled the person and found their home (an old, rural farm). I thought about writing to them but didn't really want to get in contact, I just want them to stop.

The problem is I'm never sure if they emails are spam or just from them. At the beginning I thought it was some kind of fraud, so was quite stressful.

My old work email was [email protected]. This was because there was a partner who was [email protected]. When I qualified a couple of recruitment consultants tried to guess my email address to get me on their books. He forwarded the emails with a charming message of congratulations.

If it's an account you can reset their password for, do that and change their email to [email protected]

I ended up sending a letter to a woman in Glasgow who'd used my email for her Asda account. I did try contacting Asda first to see if they could take my email off the account but they were spectacularly useless.

If it is a no reply email, there is probably an alternative contact email given somewhere in the emails or to to the companies website to find one and email them to say they have the wing contact info. Then block the domain so you don't get any more.

I recently received a bunch of emails in Spanish with appointment details from a medical centre in South America. The person's first name was my first name + the first letter of my surname, so we probably have similar email addresses.

I had a confusing exchange with the medical centre admin over email but the emails stopped.

I too have had random emails from people wanting to view my property in New York, offering to landscape my garden in Canada (also the scouts from Canada and an invitation to a skiing trip too), inviting me for a haircut in Australia and letting me know about some school related stuff in another bit of the US. I've also had nightclub bookers get in touch because apparently I'm pals with footballers, and someone created a hotel booking for me which took some considerable effort to cancel.

It's largely because Gmail ignores all punctuation before the . so [email protected] is treated the same as john.smith@... and sometimes people insert a dot instead of the correct letter (no idea what it is) and it comes to me.

I keep getting a UK person's payment details for their agency work so have to ring the agency to explain that it's not gone to the intended recipient. It seems unkind to ignore these misdirects, but it does grate somewhat.

It's a well-known confusion with Gmail but of course people can just mangle an address from any email provider.

Jo

I used to get someone else's just eat confirmation emails every weekend.

I've had the opposite happen too, where an email meant for me has gone to someone else. It was from Womens Aid, containing really sensitive info about my experiences. I was not happy.

Yes this happened to me. My email first first name.surname and they thought theirs was firstnamesurname (without the dot) but apparently the dot makes no difference and you can put it anywhere and it would still come to me. It happened for a while until I got an invoice for something and was worried they’d come after me! I knew the area they lived in from some of the emails and found them on Facebook and told them. They thought it was a scam at first but it’s not happened since

I got loads of emails from a firm of solicitors about my purchase of a house in Kent. I’m never been to Kent and I’m certainly not buying a house there. I do hope it went well though.

Oh god there’s a woman in Washington state somewhere that keeps signing me up to her son’s football group. I emailed the coach in the end as I was getting loads of personal email. I still occasionally get her dinner reservations

Someone in South Africa has the same name as me. I found out because I, along with some others, was invited to a meeting. I worried it was a scam but replied in case it wasn't as it looked like an important meeting about a school. They thanked me and I never heard from them again.

I never use my Facebook but I go in from time to time to see a pic family have posted it something. All of "people you may know" are South Africans. This poor lady is missing out on a large circle of potential friends!

I've got an unusual firstname and very rare surname but one of my email addresses is [email protected] so I assume someone with the same firstname and similar numbers in her email address.

A few years ago (when still married), I apparently signed up for a dating site. Was fun trying to explain that to my husband.

Then last month I had a booking at a posh hotel in Pennsylvania. Was tempted to turn up to that one 😄

Aaah this is the bane of my life sometimes.

I have my maiden name @hot ail.com
I don't use it for work or most stuff but I do use it for socials and old friends.

But a much younger woman has @hotmail.co.uk

I have received

Emails from her grandmother. Regularly.

Her P45
Her P60
Her payslips
Her online shopping invoices
I have seen her credit card number.
Her DL renewal
And best of all, her gift voucher birthday presents.

Stupid girl. One day I'm gonna flip my lid.

I've had lots of different ones. One was a lady in new Zealand who thought she'd emailed her daughter. I replied back and we had a short back and forth.

Next was that I received h&m order confirmations for a lady in Seattle, USA. I found her on Facebook and told her her mistake as I now had her address, phone number etc. She said she'd sort it but I got a few more of her order confirmations before she seemed to update her details.

Another was a receipt for towing a broken down car in Texas, and another was an another American person's equivalent of a p45.

Really glad I've changed my surname now and don't seem to have the same problems! Interestingly they're never others in the UK.

I regularly get emails and tweets meant for a high ranking councillor and church leader in the US. He has a similar name to mine but we abbreviated the same and it appears it is actually him giving my details in error. I sometimes response to people trying to reach him if it's important.

Just this week I had someone share a Dropbox folder with me, containing family photos. I added a text doc explaining that I was the wrong person, then removed myself.

Sender had same surname as me, so I think they'd just got a family email address confused with mine!

It's happened quite a lot as I have firstnamesurname addresses for both hotmail.com and gmail.com. Can be very entertaining!

My husband has a standard firstinitialsurname email address(uncommon surname) and gets really really frequent emails about Morris dancing events 😂 he has tried to point out the error but they keep coming!

Under an old email with my maiden name I got a few emails meant for ‘Steve’ who had a similar name- had an invitation to a job interview which unfortunately I didn’t see until after the fact so he will have missed the interview- sorry Steve!

I recently had a telephone appointment with a financial advisor. As it was regarding life insurance we discussed allsorts relating to my health -physical & mental- & income.
He said he’d email me the quotes & speak to me the following weeks.
I never received an email, he’d missed a number off.
I was furious. The reports didn’t give too much detail but it means someone out there has some of my info.

I started off getting some random emails about car purchases and real estate in the US that my namesake was enquiring about. This went on for about a year. Then I was sent links and photos of their family, birthdays, Xmas, holidays etc… and then the photos got a little more explicit - think adult play, very graphic photo of woman from the previous family photos squatting over the camera. 😳
They had accidentally shared their Google photo album with me.
I dropped several versions of the email address a note suggesting they may like to keep their private activities to themselves. I obviously got the correct email eventually because I never got another email after that.