WWYD- Getting someone elses emails? (LIGHTHEARTED!!!!)

[WiddlinDiddlin]

I've been recieving someone elses emails for the better part of twenty years now.

Her email address is nameinitialsurname, and mine is just namesurname. The issue is our first names and her middle initial are such that its easy, so so easy to miss that initial.

Imagine JulieJJohnson or SophieESmith...

Most stuff I can ignore happily, updates on her car warranty, invites to church pot lucks. Some of it I nosey at, the frequent and detailed emails from her brother as he was on his missionary years (they are Mormons) overseas were actually interesting (if you're a nosey fucker as I am).

I have tried to contact her (I have found her on FB, she has ignored my message, I friend requested her so she'd be more likely to see my message, that was ignored too).

I have actually emailed back and forth with her DF.. he seems a nice guy.

I have replied to many emails - for example when I was sent the passwords and account details for the church bank account, and when I was sent sensitive information about her daughters school classes - to correct the error.

But the error continues to occur, either because she doesn't make it clear to people to include the initial in her email address or she allows people to write it out themselves and they mess up.

Yesterday I had to cancel a zoom meeting for an outpatient hospital appointment, there was no way to contact the sender (that I could find) to let them know I wasn't the right person, and that she would be unable to join the zoom. I could have fwd'd it to her actually... damn, didn't think of that.

Tonight I've just replied to a multi-person email chain (14 members of her family) discussing selling some personal items, to point out they or at least one of them, as her email address wrong ... and can they correct it!

I know too much about this other ladies life, and I feel a growing sense of responsibility about this... that I really do not want! It's been twenty fecking years!!!

What would you do?

DP suggested I should just join in and consider them family and see how long before someone bloody notices!

The naked photos are funny (as long as the senders never realise, I guess some would be mortified!!), but having someone elses money sent to your Paypal is a proper pain in the bum!

Fortunately I am more likely to recieve religious imagery than naked with 'my' new Mormon family! Not that I particularly want it, but it's preferable to random hoohas!

Sounds like a promising plot for a novel.

In fact Gmail says it doesn't let two people register with email addresses which are the same, apart from one address having dots - which has clearly happened.

But it hasn’t happened. It can’t have. The other person is simply giving out their address wrongly.

Think about it like this. I could get a bunch of parcels from someone who has put my address at checkout. But that doesn’t prove someone’s living at my house. Just that they’ve entered their address wrong. It doesn’t matter if they’ve done it 1 time or 100, they’re still the one who messed up, not the shipping company, delivery person or online shop.

I have a name that can be spelt two ways (think Sara/Sarah) and get a lot of emails for someone who clearly spells it the other way. They're responsible for taking bookings for a venue but not sure what I can do as the venue has the right email address (i.e. not mine) on their contact page.

I'd reply to each email:

i am not your intended recipient. please triple check the email address and send again (but not to this email, or I'm marking you as spam)

Twenty years though 🤣🤣

What? This hasn't happened in your case. As far as I can tell from your post, you're getting emails addressed to the same string of letters, sometimes with dots and sometimes without. They are all your email address.

The fact that one wasn't intended for you does not change the fact that someone typed your string of letters (and didn't put dots in, or did but in different places - dots are ignored by gmail).

Nobody else owns that string of letters - only you. The other intended address will have at least one character different, that the sender is typing incorrectly.

@Thamantha try sending emails to yourself with dots, without dots, dots in different places. You will get them unless you also change the string of letters. No-one else will.

I wish I could screenshot the To field of the email to prove my point but I don't want to give my identity away. But the email address the sender has used is my first name surname without the dot separating it.
Sorry I can't quote a quote apparently.

That’s because you own the email address without the dot too or any number of dots, but the sender got the email address wrong, they will have missed out a letter or got the names the wrong way around.

I have this issue. About 20 years ago there were two types of Gmail accounts 'name.gmail.com' that in the UK you could get by being nominated ( by someone in the know), and slightly later open access in the UK to 'name.googlemail.co.uk' ... If I remember correctly it was because someone owned 'Gmail.co.uk'

A few years later this was resolved and the 'googlemail.co.uk' was merged back into the standard Gmail structure

I had the original 'Gmail.com' address, ever since this change I have followed the life of another woman with the same name as me. I am talking engagements, weddings, arrival of kids, volunteering etc... Her email address does not have 'dot' between first and second name, whereas mine does. Even when people have sent emails to the correct address, they can periodically come to me.

Gmail and Googlemail are, and always were, interchangeable. She couldn’t have signed up with yourfirstnamelastname if you had yourfirstname.lastname because it’s the same address. Even if she used gmail.com and you used Googlemail.com. They’re still the same address. She’s just getting hers wrong.

I have the same name as I very very high up senator in the USA- I am Emma.smith @….
she is EmmaSmith so very close email address
and then I started getting secure messages from the US military that she oversees some funding for etc and approval documents etc and so I emailed her and forwarded them all on.

She tracked me down at work in the U.K. and rang me at work 😂to thank me and I reassured her I had deleted the emails and emptied the trash can etc. She was very nice but I think one of her assistants might have been in trouble. I had to do some other calls with some others and sign a document etc which was all fine and she sent me a lovely bunch of flowers and I haven’t had any more emails for her

She is not emailing me, other people are emailing her. She absolutely does have the ' no dot' version.

You are correct it should not have been possible - but she does have [email protected] whereas mine is [email protected]. my Gmail address predates the introduction of googlemail addresses. ( I was a techy nerd in those days, so this was a point of pride). Which is why I suspect the glitch happened when the two address structures were merged together.

Has been happening consistently ( but only periodically) for 15-20 years...IE she is and has been getting the majority of her emails, but some still come to me.

The ones that come to you are the ones where someone has mistyped her email address. She does not have the no dots version of your email, merge or no merge, she can’t have because Gmail and Google mail were always the same thing. She’s getting the majority of her emails because those are the ones where her email address if typed correctly.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10313?sjid=8389892779698240463-EU#zippy=%2Cgetting-messages-sent-to-an-googlemailcom-address%2Cgetting-messages-sent-to-a-dotted-version-of-my-address

This is unbelievable. How are people still failing to understand that they are receiving emails because the sender has typed their email address in the "to" field?

How is this such a difficult concept to grasp?

but she does have [email protected] whereas mine is [email protected]

To Google, they are the same address.

They are the same address, to Google.

Gmail does not see dots, so the same string of letters with the dot is the same address as that string of letters without the dot.

The same.

Your address is both of those addresses, AND that string of letters with any number of dots anywhere in the string.
Your address.
Not someone else's.

That is why emails addressed like that are coming to you.

She doesn't randomly get some of your emails because there is or isn't a dot there.

Her actual real address will be something like firsttnamesurname and people are incorrectly typing one of the many dot variations of your address. Then they arrive to you.

What happens if you send an email to both of those addresses?

Btw I also had the original pre-googlemail gmail address. I still receive emails to lizsmith and liz.smith, because
the
dot
makes
no
difference

Your exasperation on this thread is amazing 😂

I have a very early "first gen" Gmail account as a [email protected] and I can assure you all erroneous mail that comes into my inbox is as a result of the sender mistyping or the other version of me deliberately giving the wrong email out (in the case of the alternate me in Canada having a lot of debt).

This must be the same reason as me. I too was given an invite back in the day when gmail was first created.
To those telling me 'I don't get it' I most certainly do thank you very much. The sender is not making a spelling mistake.

My cousin had the opposite of that - he once managed to invite a random man to his wedding because he emailed Ian Lastname rather than Iain Lastname. I know it was my mum who corrected him, I don't know if Ian Lastname ever replied to tell him he had the wrong person.

Oh it exists, I read it last year: Friends Don't Lie by Nell Pattison