Is it possible that someone else has the same email address as me?

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I have had my email address for several years, and until recently never received mail for anyone else. In the last week, I have had at least half a dozen emails which are correctly addressed , but clearly not meant for me.

My address is a googlemail acount, which has recently converted to gmail. Their help page insists it is impossible for 2 people to have the same address, and it is just coincidence that emails are suddenly being sent in error but I have never had this problem before, even once. I have seen several postings online from others with the same issue, but again google insists its just coincidence.

My major concern is that the other person could be receiving my mail.

Is anyone else having the same problem and what, if anything can I do?

Hmmm could it be an alias? I don't think it would let you register a duplicate but does anything check aliases? Maybe then thy can get misdirected?

It's certainly not meant to be possible - I think it's more likely that the other person has started filling in forms wrongly, so the emails meant for them are coming to you instead. I'd guess that the emails are from companies or other organisations, rather than being replies to emails the other person s sent out? Replies would be fine, as they go to the persn who sent them, but it's easy to fill something in slightly wrong when asked for your email address - companies can't really check it's the right one, only that it looks convincing.

Yes, they are from companies and one from a school to a parent. I have not had any personals (yet!)

I would reply to them if possible, saying that you are not the intended recipient and to please contact them by some other means to get them to sort it out - the school at least should have other ways of contacting them. It does sound like they're just making a mistake when they tell people it - it's easily done!

yet, googlemail ignores any punctuation.

So hatti.fattner is the same as hattifattner.

I get stuff for an australian teacher, a guildford nurse and an american who is into animal welfare.

They must love all the crap I get!

As far as I'm aware it isn't possible as Google enforce unique usernames across their domains. So if you registered as [email protected] then it shouldn't be possible for someone else to register as [email protected].

I had the same thing a few years ago and as the domain in question is registered to me I knew no one else had registered an email address :). It was obviously an error when someone filled out a form and the emails stopped quite quickly, presumably when they realised the error and supplied the correct address.

I have been replying to the emails but I would really like to contact the other unavailable (and tell her to get another email address, as I was here first!)

Tricky as the only contact information you have is your own email address! Hopefully the companies sending the emails will have some additional contact information and be able to let the other person know that she/he provided the wrong address. It could be as simple as someone new to email using the wrong domain (e.g. gmail.com instead of hotmail.com) because someone else set it up for them.

Hopefully they'll wonder why they're not getting their email and investigate!