Traffic? AIBU? Google. Receiving another's emails for years.

[WhereTheSuburbsMeetUttoxeter]

I'm not entirely sure where to head here.

It has been going on for years. I receive her FB notifications, the odd email addressed to her. Now my storage is 98% full - this makes me thinks it involves both accounts.

I'll explain as easily as I can - say my Gmail is google.user @ Gmail . Com
Hers is googleuser @ Gmail. Com

She lives in America in a town that has the same name as a UK town and we both have the same name. The only difference is the . in the email.

I've looked at how to report. It doesn't seem like any scam as it's being going so long. Imagine she is mabelsmithtown and I am mabelsmith.town

I don't know where to start with getting in touch. I tried to email her and it came back to me!

Sorry, boring for a Saturday night but surely there is something amiss and wrong here.
I first noticed when getting Facebook notifications thinking, I don't know that person. But I can't find her on Facebook either.
It's highly unlikely that I've 98% filled my Gmail.

Just looking for thoughts or how someone can help me get in touch with someone?

The example you give is impossible with Google. A name with a . as a divider is the SAME address. My.name@gmail is the same as Myname@gmail as is myN.ame@gmail. (capital letters don't matter either)

Maybe she is incorrectly giving people your email address as her own.

The only email address that you can see is the incorrect one for her - it is the correct one for you which is why you get it. What you do not receive are the emails that are correctly addressed for her because they do not go to you.

Or are you now saying that the difference between the email addresses as you understand it is NOT just a . but is also spelt differently?

I would write her a letter on paper and post it. I know you havent got her address but if you know her name and her town......... worth a try.

If you know what business shes in - maybe you can find the address for that. Send a letter to her work too.

Frustrating that people reading this arent believing you Suburbs - its the classic thing that because it shouldnt happen people therefore think it never ever happens. Except it is - to you.

As I said above Id try writing letters to her home and her work. Its surprising how often envelopes with scant details arrive at the intended address.

It’s not her address. It’s yours.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150

Let’s say your email is amandajoneslondon@gmail then you also own amandajones.London, amanda.Joneslondon, etc and every other variation.

She is giving people/signing up to things with the wrong email address. If she signed up after you, she wouldn’t have been able to take any combination of “Amanda Jones London”. Maybe she tried to and was suggested by Google to add a number or a letter because her choice was taken but she didn’t understand or read it correctly and assumed she had her choice of email address or people are taking it down/inputting it incorrectly. But it’s your address.

I get an American woman's emails often and her name and email address aren't even the same - think something like she's Katherine Smith and I'm Kate Smith.

I've given up worrying about it and it seems to have died down compared to six months ago.

I don't want to change my gmail address.

I’ve had this repeatedly.

first time, the mistaken user appeared to be in Florida - receipts for car hire initially (which worried me), then alumni of the university, then emails about a Florida senator’s campaign.

then real estate details for Australia

most recently last year, from Malta - including details for access for a namesake who had taken up a healthcare job there.

I check the senders to make sure they aren’t obviously spam. Then I email them to inform them they have the wrong address and to stop emailing me. Then if they keep coming, I block them/send to junk folder.

I have this with some one in Scotland - between Glasgow and Edinburgh. I know this as I have had estate agents emails, decorators quotes, sign up for the baby box, all sorts!! Depending on who or what it is I may reply with this is the wrong email address please delete. Other times I delete and ignore!

Thank you, I shall look further in to this.

However, I don't get everything. I know her name is Mabel and let's say my name is Michelle.

I'll have a look in the morning. I did email Mabel and it appeared immediately in to my inbox.

Thanks again for understanding what I'm saying at least.

NotMabel - I might change my name 🤣

If it makes any difference, it is for example

I am

[email protected]

She is

[email protected]

Maybe I her email?!

Nothing nefarious has ever happened other than I receive emails about a very specialist vehicle group that an old friend owns, but I have nothing to do with.

It looks like I have hers. No idea.

Bed beckons.
Thank you.

DP gets this. Receives emails for ‘[email protected]’ even though their account is ‘firstname.surname’. It’s made me reluctant to use gmail, doesn’t seem very secure.

@WhereTheSuburbsMeetUttoxeter but everyone is trying to explain to you

[email protected]

In Google's eyes is the same as

[email protected]

All full stops are disregarded
Therefore she must be putting in her email incorrectly and her email may be [email protected] (or [email protected] as that's the same thing) and she keeps forgetting to put the extra initial in

Nobody has signed up for the email that is one full stop different to yours, nobody has somehow duplicated yours. Nobody is reading or accessing your mail.

What people are telling you is that gmail ignores full stops. The most likely scenario is that if you are janesmith and are receiving jane.smith that there’s a (for example) janie.smith sometimes mistyping her email.

You don't need to GIVE UP. What we are saying. Is correct AS YOU EXPLAINED IT IN YOUR OP.

"I'll explain as easily as I can - say my Gmail is google.user @ Gmail . Com
Hers is googleuser @ Gmail. Com"

THESE ARE THE SAME EMAIL ADDRESS TO GOOGLE.

Email addresses aren't reserved for you because of your name. If you have a baby and call him Tom Smith he ain't getting tom.smith@gmail or tomsmith@gmail or t.omsmith@gmail or to.msmith@gmail or toms.mith@gmail or tomsm.ith@gmail or tomsmi.th@gmail or tomsmit.h@gmail becasue THEY ARE ALL THE SAME EMAIL ADDRESS and some 70 year old bloke called Tom Smith will already have registered it.

If you call him Tommy Smith and he manages to get tommysmith@gmail as his email address, that is a.seperate email address. When he stupidly forgets and gives his email address as tomsmith@gmail or people that know him as Tom Smith just guess that his email is tomsmith@gmail, those emails will go to the 70 year old bloke, not him.

That is what is happening here and there is nothing Google can do as it's just people being dumb. UNLESS there is some other difference between the email addresses than the dot and something different between them to what youbah e described in your initial post.

If you don't believe us, try and register a new Google address the same as yours with a dot in a randem place or a capital in a random place. It won't let you and it will say 'already taken'

I have a related, but not the same, issue with my brother btw with a nice story. He is called something like Dave McSmith and for some reason he chooses to use a Hotmail email address not a Gmail one. Literally everyone else I know has a personal Gmail address.

Occasionally I would be copying him into to some family email on a system that didn't show stored emails and I would absentmindedly type davemcsmith@gmail by mistake instead of davemcsmith@hotmail. I'd always get a nice email back from Dave McSmith in California saying Hi SH, you've sent this to me instead of your brother again. Greetings from the US Dave McSmith, hope you're all well! My brother would sometimes reply on the email chain and they struck up a bit of a friendship, even though I eventually trained myself out of doing it. When he went out to LA last year for work he met him for a beer 🤣.

I get loads of emails for people who can't type their own email address right. That's what this is, as countless people have explained. Just delete them, unsubscribe if they're marketing emails.

I got Gmail very early and I'm guessing a lot of people forget they have numbers in their email address.

Or think that Google magically reserves email address for people's names somehow, even though lots of people have the same full name.

Beware that even if you delete a Gmail address, it will still show as reserved for a long time, you can't recycle them.

For a while I was getting emails from an estate agent in America somewhere. The person they were meant for had the same first name as me and seemed to be her PA or something as the emails were always instructions. I had to email back several times telling the sender they had the wrong person and hoped the intended recipient didn’t get into trouble for not doing what they were told!

I have a relatively unusual surname and set up my gmail account a looooong time ago so got quitmoaning @ gmail .com. Someone in New Zealand has exactly the same name and has the email account quit.moaning @ gmail .com.

I get a lot of her emails, some of them extremely confidential, some less so (latest was her Costco New Zealand membership renewal). I am not changing my email so I just either ignore it or let the sender know depending on my mood.

I am

[email protected]

She is

[email protected]

As other have said (repeatedly) they are the exact same email. She is not [email protected] - you are. You are also [email protected] and m.smith.town@ etc

Now I give up 🤣. At least the poor Google support engineers have this same issue trying to get people to believe that it's an error on the sender's part and nothing to do with dots, which don't matte Ron personal Gmail addresses: https://support.google.com/mail/thread/12454487/dots-do-matter-in-gmail-addresses?hl=en

Also, getting a few hundred mis-addressed emails from someone with the same name as you isn't what is filling up your Google drive space....

Emails are tiny compared to photos and videos. And you can just delete them or set up a rule to auto delete them anyway

msmithtown+thisisnotmyemail @ gmail.com

Is also her email 😂

Oh god don't tell them about the pluses!