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?

I genuinely love how flexible my Gmail address is, I just wish other people could spell their own.

I couldn't help myself 🤣

Why don't you set up some google email rules and send her emails strait to the bin?

Her email address will actually be something slightly different like mtsmithtown. She's sometimes giving it out wrong, as msmithtown, and what she is giving out is the same as your email address, but without the dot, which Gmail ignores and so delivers to you.

Her actual email address is not the same as yours but without the dot. It's something slightly different.

And then set the bin to autoempty at logoff so you never even have to see them, or worry they are taking up space, or even know that someone in the US, or one of their associates, doesn't know their own email address correctly and so is using yours by mistake.

Well thanks MN. I've learnt something useful here. If you both have 'the same' email address, does she get yours? Can she log into your account? Why didn't the address show up as taken when you registered?

if someone sends an email to
[email protected]

and one to [email protected]

and one to [email protected] - they are ALL TREATED AS THE SAME address by google.

When you register 'example' you also automatically register e.x.ample, exampl.e , e.x.a.m.p.l.e etc - the dots are invisible to google.
No-one else would have been able to register any combination of these - they all belong to you.

So this is someone mistakenly telling other people, or signing up with, a wrong address and giving them yours, or a variation of yours including the dot that gmail ignores.

It's a misdirected email. The person probably has a different email address but sometimes gets it wrong when they tell it to others.

Do you understand? Her email address is NOT 'msmith.town'. She would not be able to register that, because that is also your email address.

It will be something like townmssmith . Or something completely different.

They don't have the same email address. It's not possible. Once OP registered, all variations of the account name, with dots or without, all belong to her.

The other person's actual, real, email address will have letters in a different order, or have numbers, and she's telling people the wrong address so they send them to OP's address.
Nothing to do with logging into accounts.

How would you set up a rule if Gmail can't distinguish between different variations of the address? I dont use Gmail but from what I'm reading it sees them as the same thing

I wonder if they were able to redo they'd set it up in the same way, as a Hotmail user is seems bizarre

I can imagine how frustrating this is. I love the explanation about + signs though! I've just tested it from another email account and it's brilliant.

Someone else would not have been able to register quit.moaning, because google sees that as your account. qui.t.m.oaning, q.u.i.tmoaning etc will all be your account.

The dots are irrelevant to google. I know this seems weird. As long as the letters are the same, and in the same order, then it is your account. The other person does not have this email account.

Her actual gmail account will be something different, possibly by one letter, or number, but she's telling people wrong. Yes, it's very weird that people don't know their own email address but I get it a lot.

If you changed your email, say to qmoaning, then the likelihood is you'll have another person who's registered as qmmoaning, having people send emails to you because they miss out the second 'm' .
Changing your address won't stop people sending emails to a misspelt or incorrectly given address.

Noooooooo! You have not learnt!!!!!

It's OP's email. Not this other persons. The other person thinks it's there's, but it's not. OP got it first. When other person tried to claim it, she was unable to do so, but clearly didn't realise that, or it was suggested she add random numbers to her proposed email. Which she periodically forgets to add when telling other people what her email is.

• theirs not there's.

They don't both have the same gmail address. The Gmail system wouldn't let you register name.surname as an address if namesurname was already taken. Only OP has that email address and can login to it. The other person, or people trying to email the other person, are mistakenly sending it to the OPs address.

Maybe they are just guessing that the person in the US that has the same name surname as OP has the email address namesurname/name.surname/NameSurname etc (which are all the same address! And belong to OP!). Or maybe the person in the US just assumes they have email address namesurname because they are called Name Surname, or are forgetting that when they signed up for Gmail, the system told them they couldn't have NameSurname as an email address because with that was already taken (by OP) so they actually have name.x.surname (=namexsurname) instead.

There is no mystery here. Computers translate letters into binary ASCII code, 0s and 1s and just direct the email appropriately. Some human somewhere is mistakenly sending emails to other people's inboxes using their correct numbers. Same as if you typo one wrong didgit in someone's phone number, you will be connected to someone else.

law of unintended consequences 🤣

They did it to avoid confusion apparently but I would think the confusion they've created a out people thinking other people can login to their emails because they think dotted addresses are different is probably greater ..

"Many will speculate why it exists, however, Slate reports it’s likely Google doesn’t allow periods to avoid email confusion. For example, if all that differentiates one email from another is one character, there would probably be many accidentally mixed up emails for people with common names. That’s a bit scary considering what hackers can do with your email address.

As for the other e-mail providers? The location of the dots matters for e-mails on Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo Mail, and Apple iCloud. Dots don’t matter for Facebook, and they aren’t used at all for Twitter handles."

And Google filters do see the dot (local searching that doesn't go through the mail servers where the 'ignore dots' rule is applied) so you can use them to screen the 'wrong' ones.

Well I didn't specify what I've learnt so not sure how you can say I haven't! I now know [email protected] is the same as [email protected]. .......or some+[email protected] etc....
I didn't know that before so that's useful if I'm setting up additional accounts. I've learnt something.
Those that know more than me have now deduced that the other person is mistakingly giving out OPs address (or a version of it) so I've learnt something else.
What I can't fathom out is how she's able to read any of 'her' emails....presumably she doesn't, just the ones going to her correct address.

@VisionsOfSplendour

How would you set up a rule if Gmail can't distinguish between different variations of the address? I dont use Gmail but from what I'm reading it sees them as the same thing

You can make rules on all sorts of things not just the address.

I've got this as well - gmail in my maiden name forwards to current gmail. Same name as someone in the US - I get her mortgage stuff, nursery updates with photos. I just auto delete...

Nearly JudgeRudy, it would be something + thing @ gmail.com for that one to be the same😁

And well done for keeping up, it isn't intuitive to people new to the vagaries of messaging systems. People who work in IT or who can code such as myself and I suspect a few others on this thread are used to this silliness. I remember tearing my hair out in my early twenties trying to work out how to quote something in a program.

I have this with an American woman with the same name. She obviously had to take a slightly different email address as I had it first, but either she forgets to add the different number/letter or people correct what they think is her misspelling and I get her emails.

It has to be her to be honest. At one point I was getting her emails for football practice from the school. All details about the kid, dates, times, pickups. I emailed the school and told them as it was a safeguarding issue, but the next term it happened again.

At one point I was getting all her real estate information too. When she made a fancy restaurant booking in. New York for 10 people i immediately cancelled it. No idea if it caused chaos for her when she turned up and it wasn’t booked but almost straight away after that it almost completely stopped. Very rare it happens now. She obviously started paying attention after that!

I know this isn’t the point of the thread but if your mailbox is nearly full, can’t you go into your storage settings and delete your old/large emails?

Is there an award for Most Frustrating Thread? This one should win it

And delete sent items (saving any you need) as this can build up over years.

At one point I was getting all her real estate information too. When she made a fancy restaurant booking in. New York for 10 people i immediately cancelled it. No idea if it caused chaos for her when she turned up and it wasn’t booked but almost straight away after that it almost completely stopped. Very rare it happens now. She obviously started paying attention after that!

Omg I wouldn't dare but I sort of admire your giving-no-shits!

I have this with somebody in South Africa. I get medical bills, flight details, round robins… I email the sender every time to explain but it hasn’t happened for a while, fortunately.

I remember years ago giving my email address to a company over the phone. I said ‘it’s my first name and last name at gmail.com’. Nothing came through so I phoned them back and asked what email address they had sent the doc too. ‘We’ve sent it to [email protected]’ I wonder how many wayward emails the owner of that address gets.