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?

This is the most frustrating conversation I have ever witnessed.

On the bright side, at least I learned something new about gmail addresses ignoring any full stops before the @ - very useful.

I love it when an op doubles down in the face of clearly being completely wrong.

I have this issue, actually with more than one person. I'm google.user@gmail but I get emails for googleuser. I think that they have set up the email with numbers in the address but forget that they did. It got to the point where I was getting very personal information about someone sent to me so I intervened, plus then password info.

Wow 50% of voters don't understand email addresses 🙈.

I get this to. Someone with the same name as me obviously occasionally gives out the wrong address by mistake or people misunderstand her.

Why anyone would think that it's anything other than described above is beyond me.

Most frustrating thread I've ever read.

Presumably this is why 99% of app and website signups have a “please verify your email address” process, so that if someone mistypes their own email address they will not get the email and so the registration will not be completed. It’s interesting that OP is getting Facebook-related emails for this person as you’d think they’d have such a process.

OP, you’re not clicking on verify links that come in from signups you haven’t done, are you?

(I suppose the other reason for the verify email thing is to stop someone else signing up for things with an email that is not their own, for malicious purposes).

I can't decide if I love this thread or hate it. 😂

I get this too. My Gmail (which I've had since the week Gmail launched when I still used a Motorola razr!) is my first name DOT lastname (at) Gmail for com.

Several other people with the same name use the same email address without the dot, and one of the has an additional letter between first and last name and yet I get their emails too.

Things I have done that helped

• any retail mailing list type emails, or subscriptions to services etc, I block and mark as spam.

-ive used filters to block any of the 'wrong permutations'

• when I get emails from people the other users clearly know in real life/ are from an actual vet/ swimming teacher etc I email them back and say the email address is incorrect, please amend and speak to customer re this

• I once got someone's divorce papers/ child custody arrangement proposals from the STBXH's solicitor. From the details given I was able to find the woman on FB and let her know. I emailed the solicitors and suggested they used a secure document transfer system, and reminded them of their GDPR responsibiliries. I no longer get any emails for this particular person.

• I've tried reaching out to some of the others using FB Messenger when obvious location details were in the email (eg JustEat delivery details)

One was using my actual email, not her own without the DOT, and she refused to believe me, even when I was able to tell her that her dog, Fido, was due to be castrated the following day.

-i just delete.

IME Google customer services refuse to admit it's a problem, and call it a 'feature' lol.

Also, should add I understand about the dot being meaningless in Gmail. I always click on the message details and can see that the sender is sending emails to 'my' email address and is not using the dot (which henceforth should be known as the Mumsnet Dot, a bit like the Oxford Comma)

What I don't understand is why, if my email is [email protected] I also get emails that have been sent (according to message details) to [email protected] and [email protected]?

Also, I'm pretty sure that Google actually required you to use the bloody DOT when it first launched. A lot of my early adopter friends also have the dot, (we were all graduating at the time Gmail launched and needed more professional emails that didn't reflect our MSN user handles 🤣) and looking through my contacts all of us still have the same format usernames. With the dot.

You definitely didn't need to add a dot when it first launched as invite only.

My dad has this exact problem!

His email is (EXAMPLE) [email protected]
and he keeps getting emails for [email protected] - a guy with the same name but no dot between first and surname.
These comprise of eBay winning bids, stuff about train sets, and notifications from match.com

It's very strange and shouldn't happen, but definitely does and is.
His is an old account too, from the beginning of googlemail.

the Mumsnet dot 🤣

Everyone that thinks Google have given the same address to 2 people, reply to it and tell your stalker to eff off and se aht happens.

@SmartHome 😂

@dankfarrik i love it as I feel clever 😬

Have you checked that these aren't additional addresses, i.e. you've been CC'd in? Usually spammy emails going to susansmith, and susansmith1, and susan1smith etc. These will all be separate accounts in google.

Oh bless. Read the thread.

I can't tell if people are being deliberately obtuse or if they really believe that "email isn't secure" and lots of people's messages get sent to the wrong addresses.

If this is a windup, kudos to the OP. 👵

😂😂 Great work

When you reply to any of the people who are sending their emails to your address, be careful not to provide your personal details - the 'Google dots don't matter' feature (bug) is a known way to try and scam people:

HyggeTygge - no these are very specific personal emails from, say, the Winchester Junior Tennis Club regarding little Dulcie's wayward backhand. Or JustEat saying the dirty double lentil and sawdust burgers are en route. As opposed to bitcoin 'opportunities' or penile enlargement.

And your actual email address is not in the "to" field anywhere?

(Or the CC or BCC fields)?

@WhereTheSuburbsMeetUttoxeter sorry OP, spoke to dh and he said he stopped receiving these emails after the wedding although he did mutter that maybe there wasn’t a wedding as some were from the vicar confirming details!

No - nowhere.

I have this problem, it is as people are trying to explain.
I have (lets say)

[email protected]

she has

[email protected]* *

Because the centre initial is easy to miss here, both written and spoken, people mistype the email address.

Because the gmail treat both 'annasmith' and 'anna.smith' as the same thing, and because I got my address first, I get all the mistyped emails.

I get them from her brother, her dad, her church, her kids school, I've been sent passwords, financial details, important event details, car insurance info, car purchase info from the dealership - at this point its been going on 10 years and if I wanted to steal her identity, I very easily could.

It took quite a while to work out WHAT the real email address was, i think it was her brother who revealed it, as I will reply to every incorrectly recieved email saying 'I am not the Anna Smith you're looking for, please check the email address again, you've missed a number or a letter'.

Initially i was getting so much email it did look as if we had the same email address, and it was pretty confusing but once I actually talked to someone I discovered the error everyone was making, so now I let them know what her actual email address is, and then i tend not to get the same stuff over and over, only when she signs up to somewhere new.

Also worth keeping in mind, some people have more than one email and will use an account they almost never look at (I have a hotmail for this!) for all sorts of things - if they're giving out your email address incorrectly for this purpose, and so they never actually look in that account, they will not know they're not recieving those emails.