Should I try and get in touch with these people

[ThanksAntsThants23]

Last year I realised someone had used my email address to book their holiday/trip through booking.com, I kept getting updates throughout their trip from holiday accommodation owners asking the questions about their bookings, sometimes worried that they hadn’t had any response from them but I guess they hadn’t seen the emails so never knew there was any concerns. I knew every detail of their trip and quite enjoyed following along.

Since then I have had intermittent emails meant for this person/family, I now know quite a lot about them and have worked out that the woman has a similar name to me although I think the problem is that the man is accidentally using my email when booking things thinking it’s hers. I also know a lot about their child as I have received correspondence from a health service the child received through school (I did reply to the service to alert them that this was not the correct email address and let them know about the data breach) however many emails intended for this family continue to arrive in my inbox. I have been assuming they would eventually realise that they have been using the wrong address and stop using it especially after the school incident but they (or he?) don’t seem to have caught on, I could quite easily track them down and tell them given the information I know about them but should I bother or just leave it and hope they eventually sort it out themselves?

I think you should have contacted the senders each time with a brief note saying they have the incorrect email and it would have stopped when they contacted the person who was giving the incorrect email.
You shouldn't be nosying at info you know isn't intended for you, even when accidental. You could have nipped this in the bud and now you've got private medical info.

Yes I’d contact them

My partner has a common first and second name (think David Evans type of thing) and gets this a lot. Once you type an email in once, most email programmes will auto fill it so the wrong one gets used again and again unless you're on the lookout.

We accidentally kept inviting someone with a similar name to ultrasounds etc.

Tell them and ask them to type email address in carefully.

You really shouldn't have continued to read once you worked out they weren't for you. Yoy should have had a response ready to cut and paste each time to ask the sender to please alert the intended recipient.

I didn’t nosy at anything, I received an appointment for a medical service for an unspecified child, my child also has some issues at schools so I opened the attachment and read it to find out what I’m the school had referred my child to and then saw the name of the child was incorrect. I was still confused as to whether the appointment was meant for my child but had sent the wrong attachment so had to google the service and found it was in the wrong part of the country and associated with a particular school. The j realised the surname of the child was the same as these people. I immediately replied and told them there have a been a data breach so they could take action.

Most of the stuff is no reply emails like the booking.com stuff I would have to log into their account to reply

Why haven't you just replied each time?

I had this, a lady was getting married with my exact name and I had loads of wedding venues, hair and make-up ladies contacting me. Our emails were one character different.

I can't imagine not letting people know? Especially something like a precious holiday or child health....

How strange.

Yes, track them down and tell them.

Quite often though when you book through a site like AirBnb or Booking you get a confirmation email from a non-manned email address, so there is no point responding.

It depends how much it bothers you OP, how much of an inconvenience it is. If it's just the odd email now and then, I'd be tempted just to delete and block the sender.

OP you said:

I knew every detail of their trip and quite enjoyed following along.

You did nosy. You should have nipped it in the bud. The partner or whoever is including the wrong email can't know if you don't tell the sender.

Yes I did nosy on the trip actually 😂

there was nothing I could do about that without signing into their booking.com account and replying to the messages.

I had a similar scenario to how yours started - I received a family’s booking.com confirmation to my email, made by a man using what he clearly thought was his wife’s email address (she and I have the same names), but she must have a similar but slightly different email address. I went straight to booking.com on Twitter and they sorted it out via a DM conversation.

Go direct to each organisation contacting you and make sure you actually get responses from them. They need to take action to remove your details from their databases, so make sure they do. I have never had another thing since that one incident so it is pretty certain that booking.com did actually get in touch with their customer and get an alternative email, and remove mine.

You should let the original sender know it’s the wrong email address. I’ve had similar before, obviously for someone with the same name as me. One was from a private medical clinic so I let them know straight away. Another one was a woman obviously in a very senior role in a big national company talking to another senior person in the company about giving her graduate daughter a job. I have the same name as her daughter and she had copied my email address in to the trail. I emailed to let her know and it was quite amusing to read the grovelling response asking me to delete everything- basically so that the nepotism was not discovered.

Yes, of course you can get in touch with booking.com without logging in! Ring or email customer services, or do what I did and tweet them. Don’t be passive or you’ll end up with it all continuing.

Each time you get an e-mail like this, which clearly isn't spam, then you send a reply back stating that the e-mail address is wrong and this information should not have been sent to you. Some companies do send from addresses you cannot reply to but in that case try to find their contact details on their webpage, and let them know you're getting e-mails intended for someone else.

It's not your fault you got the initial e-mails but you choose not to notify the senders and also to read information not intended for you.

It's not too late to inform the senders though.

I had something similar a few years ago. it seemed someone had taken a potential love interests email down incorrectly.. I was away for an few daysb( pre smart phones) and came back to a stream of initially ador8ng and then sad and frustrated emails as the clearly besotted man found je was being ignored.. I sent a nice email explaining his mistake and never heard from him again!

don't try to track them down OP. explain to the senders, unsubscribe from their mailing lists and create your own excitements!!

@SmashedPrawnsInAMilkyBasket the booking.com thing didn’t really bother me and I assumed they would eventually wonder why they aren’t getting confirmation emails and check the address, it’s things like the school etc where I do have to reply to let them know. To be honest it’s not really a big deal to me but sometime I just wonder about contacting them directly.

I get so so many of these. The only time I try and sort it out now are times when it seems urgent.

I've had this and let them know by email that I was receiving highly personal and financial information.

Never heard back. I started to reply to emails like you would post saying not known at this address. It stopped eventually.