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 have the same with gmail, OP.

I have to assume that if I get his emails, he gets mine, so I no longer use that email for online banking etc.

I want to cry 😅. Kudos to @SmartHome for taking the time to re-explain a very simple concept multiple times. I think I would turn into a serial killer if I worked in customer support at Google!

I felt a bit bad doing it but honestly I was getting so many emails with really personal information. She’d obviously been giving the real estate woman grief about not getting her emails too, as several were repeat information and apologies for her “not receiving” important documents. I emailed the RA woman twice too, and the second time she said “I’ve double checked with my client this is the correct email!” Madness.

When I was a student I worked on an early incarnation of internet bankings helpdesk for a high st bank. Do you know how many times I explained what a mouse was 🤣. I remember having to try and think of multiple ways to describe it to one guy and eventually we worked out he'd never seen it as it was still in the box.

In all seriousness, I've had to have financial things about tax and investments explained to me multiple times as it's not a world I live in, so I treat computer stuff the same way (although my mother has nearly broken me).

If you read the thread carefully you will see that this won't happen - you can't see each other's emails, only emails that have been sent to your address by mistake instead of the other person's address. If you're careful when you sign up with things to give your correct email address, no-one else will receive them.

Same applies to whichever email address you do use for banking - if you enter it correctly it won't go to anyone else (except I suppose for any human error in the banking system, which can happen with any provider)

It's the attachments that eat up your storage...

You can also do a search for emails over size (or set up an auto label like LARGE) so you can easily review and delete (after forwarding to yourself without attachment)

Why don't you open one of the more personal emails and reply, explaining the situation and asking them to get her to sort it out?

This happens to me regularly and it's clear from messages it's multiple people doing it. (I am [email protected] and get messages in that format and without the dot.)

Sometimes it's people misstypying their own email address when signing up for something, more often other people emailing the wrong person. If the former I either delete the email, or if I can the delete the user account they've created/ contact company. If the latter I will usually let the person know they've emailed the wrong person, which has occasionally lead to atrange exchanges. Annoying but no way to stop it.

I wonder if the OP believes us yet that there's nothing unexplainable going on and that no one else can read her emails?

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've had people use one of my gmail email addresses in the US for hotel and flight bookings, so I change the booking to a different date. .

They get cancelled, that person stops using my email address and then it starts again in a few years.

I've had that Gmail address since the beginning.

OMG, this is the tip I needed. My storage is at 98% as well and the larges attachments come from photos a relative in America has sent me. But Gmail doesn't let you remove the attachment like Outlook does (I still want the email). Why have I never thought of doing this before?

I'm fascinated by this thread and now really feel I'm missing out as I have a straightforward gmail address but have never got anyone else's emails.

The rule would use the to address.

I had this! I used to get all sorts of interesting emails for more than one person with my name. I even got someone's (adult) baptism photos from the US and apparently one of the others has an orange farm and they donate loads of fruit to charity.

I made a new email address in the end and use that one instead

Oh dear!!! Read the thread....

I remember having a job in 2001 where I repeatedly had to explain to people that capital letters are in fact meaningless in emails!!

OP I can also confirm it happens. A colleague of mine working in social services sent an email to a client who was joebloggs@gmail... And got a response from some random bloke in Australia who was joe.bloggs@gmail It caused all manner of problems because there was confidential info in the email. She could prove she'd sent it to the correct address through.

It's been confirmed several times that [email protected] is the same email address as [email protected].

No, it didn’t happen. What happened was your colleague was given the wrong address to begin with.

This.

Lots of people put extra numbers and letters in their email address because there are lots of Joe Bloggs. Unfortunately when giving out the address they forget to tell people that they are [email protected] or people don't put it in.

My DP has a few with various numbers and letters in it, there as I got two of mine with just my name in 2000 and 2004 so don't have them.

I have this, which is weird because I have an unusual name, but there’s at least two other women inadvertently giving out my email address (and I do understand the dot thing so no need to explain again…but sterling work!)

I once got the confirmation of a flight booking, and for a split second considered trying to check in before the real person and nicking her seat, but then thought of several reasons why that wouldn’t work (not least because I live in the South East and the flight was from Glasgow airport and it would probably be. Ore expensive to get to Glasgow then to book my own flight to Spain).

I also got a payslip for someone in Maine. I did contact the sender to let them know as it seemed important, but they seemed irritated and disbelieving so I didn’t bother again.

Hilariously, either Scottish myname or American myname has signed up to a dating service to find sugar daddies, and I get loads of super weird emails about how to be a good “sugar baby” and what I should wear on my first date, etc. I’m a middle aged married mum so not quite sure I would qualify, but the emails are eye opening.

The correct email was probably [email protected] or [email protected] - either your colleague or the client had it slightly wrong.

OP, people understand what you're saying just fine. But you're wrong. Sorry to be so blunt, but you're making a crucial mistake in not understanding how email works.

My understanding of the situation: you believe that you've registered janesmith@gmail and that someone else has registered jane.smith@gmail and that some gmail bug is resulting in you receiving her emails.

This is not what's happening.

If you register janesmith@gmail then you automatically own jane.smith@gmail as well, because email addresses don't recognise dots that appear before the @.

What's actually happened is that this other person tried to register janesmith@gmail, couldn't (because you'd already registered it), so she registered janesmith1@gmail or janessmith@ or whatever, then either she's forgetting that her email address has an extra 1 or an extra s in it and is telling people the wrong address, or people are thinking "janessmith must be a mistake and she meant to write janesmith" and that's why they are emailing you instead of her.

A lot of people assume their email address must be [email protected] regardless of whether they actually registered that username or not. Like they think it just happens automatically, and get really confused when told that they don't own that email address. "But it's MY name?? How can I not own my own name???"

When I was doing my A Levels, my personal tutor was named Tess Susan Smith (not real name obviously but same name pattern, first name ending in SS, and middle and second name both starting with S) so her email address was tessssmith@whatever. Note FOUR s in a row in the middle. And everyone (including myself once) accidentally emailed tesssmith@whatever and got polite but obviously very fed up emails back. Because it's very difficult to see the visual difference between tessssmith and tesssmith. You have to either religiously copy and paste/autocomplete every time, or really look very closely to see that one has three Ss in the middle and the other has four Ss in the middle.

A lot of people don't have high computer literacy and don't realise how email addresses work. I've had people phone up to have a go at me for not including the dot they'd put in their email address, where I've tried and failed to explain to them that email systems don't recognise dots before the @, it makes literally zero different if you include them or not, and clearly they were receiving emails I'd sent without the dot just fine, but they were insistent that me not putting the dot in would lead to some random person who'd registered the exact same username without the dot receiving their mail. People just aren't educated about it.

Such an interesting thread! I didn't realise this and have been testing sending emails to myself from my yahoo account. I can confirm that all variations of dots and pluses as well come flying home correctly. Amazing!

That’s a coincidence, are you sure it’s definitely not for you

Brilliant 🤣