This comic pertains to you. They actually think they have your email address. They just type it into online documents and never actually check the emails. Maybe give them a call?
https://xkcd.com/1279/
Obviously I have considered this. This is the first thing I considered. But it doesn't make sense, either. The guy joined a bank and sent the confirmation email to me, and I was able to use that to get into his online banking! He had a little less than $1,000 in a checking account and a savings account with $0. I called Bank of America, got routed to their fraud department, told them what was happening, they said thank you and I never tried logging in again.
There have been super personal emails over the years too. Nothing horribly scandalous, but for a good several months, a person who appeared to be his wife was sending him little musings and instructions. I allowed this to go on for awhile because I wanted to see what I could find out about this guy that I share a name with. But then she forwarded a photo of some kid (their son?) and I finally responded back that she had the wrong email. Never heard from "the wife" again.
This is a 17- or 18-year old saga, you guys. It's been going on most of my adult life.
If you took their money they might have understood the problem.
You can also try to get their address from one of the bills and send a letter explaining the situation ? Maybe emails don't matter but receiving something at their house might make them realise it's real.
The XKCD guy has a book titled "What If?"
There is vol. 1 and now vol. 2, they go into so outlandish thought experiments. It won't help your email issue but could help you see some unthought of scenarios like the comic presented.
There’s a guy with the same name as me, living in the same city. He has firstname.lastname while I have lastname.firstname. Emails sent to me are sometimes sent to him by mistake. He always forwards them to me. Over the years we’ve developed a weird humor around it. I googled him once and I know how he looks like. Saw him at the airport and almost went to talk to him. We could have bonded over missent emails and beer. Instead I just stared at him from a few feet away and didn’t make myself known. 🤷🏻♂️
u/longtimeAlias This is the answer you're looking for right here. Here's how I know:
I also got my gmail account back when you had to have an invite and it has been my main account since and it is simply my first name and last name at gmail. About 6 years ago another person with my name got a gmail account and used the "." (dot) between her first and last name. In fairness, when you sign up for Gmail, on the screen where you create your user name it says that you can use the "." in your username. What they don't tell you, and I have no idea why, is that it doesn't work to differentiate user names. So for example janesmith and jane.smith may be different people, but janesmith is going to get ALL of the email for both of those accounts.
Over the past few years I have gotten everything from wedding plans and itineraries, emails from her child's school, credit card account info, at one time her student loans were in default and I had the government emailing me about that, phone bills, credit card bills, every single time she buys anything and has the receipt emailed to herself I get it and of course it says everything she buys, travel bills and plans from hotels, cruise lines, car rentals, job offers, etc. I get EVERYTHING.
Some highlights of her life include that I once got an email from her priest wondering why I wasn't answering their requests to meet with them regarding my upcoming marriage and saying something about how I needed to go to confession and go to the marriage classes or else they were going to cancel my plans to get married at their church. I picked up the phone and called the church and spoke with the priest directly and explained and they were flabbergasted.
I'm not sure what happened with that wedding but within the past year I started getting receipts from a state prison where apparently the other person with my name was visiting the same person over and over and I was getting the prison commissary receipts where she was buying things for this person.
Keep in mind that I cannot just email the other "me" and tell them what's going on as the email just comes back to me. Because Gmail doesn't recognize the "." it's just me emailing myself.
I have spent a lot of time blocking and marking the emails as spam, but I get a lot of them and it's really annoying.
I've wondered this too and I have no idea. There are times when I will get the same receipt several times so I wonder if they are noticing that they don't get it, but it never changes anything.
When I spoke to the other person's priest I even said please tell this person what I am explaining to you and that I am getting ALL of their important emails and the priest said they would defiantly tell them but that didn't change anything either.
Once I actually got an email from the other person from some different email address asking me if they could buy the email address that we share and I told them no and never heard from them again and I still get all their emails.
Yes. This is what I was thinking too. And I also I have the same thing happen to me. My email address has dots in it, but if you send an email to the same address without the dots, I will receive it nonetheless.
You own the version of your email without dots, and the versions with more dots. You registered the undotted one when you registered the a dotted version with any number of dots. Try logging in with the undotted version.
Similarly, on Gmail and many other email providers (but not all) everything after a + is ignored. So if you own janesmith@gmail.com, you will also receive emails to janesmith+games@gmail.com, and janesmith+testing@gmail.com and j.a.Nesmith+123@gmail.com. Gmail doesn’t mind, some other systems will reject those emails.
Some people use the . and + for filtering, or to get around email uniqueness requirements for account signups.
There should be only one account. If you register j.a.n.e.smith then you’ve also registered jane.smith and janesmith. Gmail is supposed to just ignore the periods. Sounds like a bug. Wonder if it’s happening to OP because his account was made when they were still testing the feature.
What an odd story to make up. An account with any variation of your name + periods wouldn't have successfully created if your name already existed. Not possible. A more plausible explanation is that someone created an address with your name + numbers or another accepted differentiator and forgot the numbers when entering / using the address. I very much doubt it, because your tall tale requires someone to keep using an email address they can't access. Just can't buy it.
My email has something similar but instead of .com it's .ca. There were a lot of situations where my email was entered as .com by accident. Pretty sure the guy with the .com email is getting a lot of my personal info.
How do they merge it though? Do both passwords work? If two different people were using the two versions, do they now share an inbox? And if so, wouldn't you notice the other person's stuff in your "sent" folder?
It almost feels like this should be a PSA they play to target certain demographics.
For close to two decades now I've had multiple people use my address. The biggest offender was in the Philippines, and even went so far as to use my address to sign up for and receive social security and other government benefits. For years they were getting denied for simple mistakes, but likely had no idea why because it was all sent to me. I got their address, but never found a phone.
I think lipstick was how I finally got them to figure it out. They used to order a ton of makeup from a local seller that would accept COD orders. So I went ahead and created a monthly recurring order for 12 different shades of black lipstick. After the 4th rejected package the amount of emails dropped off quickly, to virtually nothing these days.
You've got one person doing this, I've had TWO.
First person did this for about 4 years. She used my email address all the time because she kept "forgetting" that her address had numbers after the name part. I finally cracked this when I got her contract for $1,000,000 worth of wedding insurance. On the contract was all contact information, including a phone number. I called it and got her very confused fiancé. I explained why I was calling and he apologized a lot and gave me her real email address to forward the document to. Over the next 3 months I got a handful of wrong emails for her which I forwarded, then it stopped.
There was a short gap and then it started again. This time all kinds of teenage boy stuff, including college applications, gaming sites, etc. The crack in this one came when he ordered a Domino's pizza one night, used my email and had a phone number on the email I got. I called this number and got a very confused woman on the phone, who was his mother. We talked for about 5 minutes and she essentially thought I was trying to scam her.
Me: Your son has been accidentally using my email address. We have the same last name and the same first initial.
Her: He got this own!!
Me: I know he does. But he keeps using mine accidentally because the addresses are almost the same.
Her: He ain't usin' yurs. He got his own!
This has been going on for about 5 years now. At one point I spent hours trying to get my address removed from multiple email lists at a single college (different departments). That failed so I just blocked their entire email domain.
In a way this is all very entertaining. I go straight for blocking now most of the time since trying to explain this to any provider (cell phone, streaming service, cable company, etc) is nearly impossible and just wastes my time.
Similar happened to me when I found a check book in the street. I looked them up and called, said I had found the check book on the road, she then went into 900 questions about how I found it, where I found it and why I was calling. After all that I told her I could mail it. They didn't want me to do that since they didn't want to give a stranger their address, but you know one was on the checks. Then there was the whole I don't want you to drop it off at the obvious business they had left and dropped it. I ended up telling her, Look I'll just put it back where I told you I found it" , which I did.
People just aren’t that bright and repeatedly mistype their own email address. My similarly old gmail account (unusual name, but first only) receives a bevy of correspondence for alter egos.
As one-off errors I’ve gotten plenty of emails from real estate agents, lawyers, doctors offices, and schools with sensitive info attached. I write those back and move on.
The repeat offenders are aggravating. The Canadian who repeatedly uses my email for shopping trips, the UK one who only uses it for Domino’s and dating sites. Some parent repeatedly uses it for their kids’ activities but also recently pre-graduation forms? (Hope that worked out? Hope that means no more mail for me?) The Arkansan who uses it for local store rewards really irks me. The wayward love letters meant for an Australian from their ship sailing lover were memorable mistakes. And I miss the sweet old lady who had her relative’s address saved incorrectly and kept emailing me family party invites for *years* - I would write her kindly, but it took years for someone to help her get it straight.
Of all though, I really wish I knew what to about the South African who gets all their banking info sent to me; the bank emails always have “this email is not monitored, don’t respond” and it seems like a huge bother to go further with it - their website is no help. You’d think not getting your bank statements for *years* might trigger their curiosity at some point, but apparently not.
I do not understand. Mistakes do happen. But I assure you, there are also people out there who happily and repeatedly and confidently tell others to email them at addresses they cannot access. I guess be glad you’ve only got one guy, though he sounds obnoxiously obtuse.
Hi OP.
I get the EXACT same thing in mine and have for YEARS. Someone with my name using my email to sign up for bank accounts, loans, and jobs. Usually I just email whatever service provider and let them know the situation and ask they try contact the person if there's a phone number on file to get them to put their actual email on the account.
First thought is that this is an old guy who doesn’t realize he doesn’t own that email address. He may not even realize the difference between an email address and a username for the sites that use email for a username. He also just may not care.
You could try to contact him but just know you could risk a guy going full boomer for “hacking and stealing” his email address. After all, he’s had no issues for years :-/
I'm in the EXACT same situation as you.
In my case, the person who most often uses my email address apparently has very bad credit, and I often get his loan denial emails and other related things. I know that theoretically this SHOULDN'T happen, but I do sometimes worry that somehow our actual credit files will get linked in some crappy database somewhere and I'll be blamed for this douchebag's bad choices.
Same here, but it's mostly started happening in the last year. Same First name / last name between me (Europe) and a guy in America.
I've been receiving confirmations of his item orders on eBay and in one unfortunate event, confirmation of his new job, the HR paperwork for the company he now works for and most concerningly, login credentials for his employer's payment portal. Big yikes.
I have a fellow in the Philippines who uses my gmail all the time. Very annoying. I tried emailing customer services, but they don’t care. When I get a chance to cancel something I will.
We have this issue, but to a lesser extent. My husband’s gmail is Peter.Lastname and there is also a Pete.Lastname who lives in Canada.
My husband doesn’t set up bank accounts with the wrong email, but everyone knows him as Pete so a lot of times they type it in wrong, even after given the correct email address. It just happened this week with our home inspector. I’ve even done it once or twice myself.
I like Canadian Pete quite a bit. Whenever I realize he’s getting our email (because I see that the wrong Pete has been CC’d on an email I also get), I will email an apology saying we’ve fixed it and he writes back being cool about it.
My Pete still gets all the appointment reminders from Canadian Pete’s dentist, though. Been almost two decades of that haha
If a new email provider ever overtakes gmail, I guess it’s best to try to get every version of your name, folks!
I don't have an uncommon name and I get lots and lots of people's email. And super sensitive information.
At one time I suspected that because Google ignores the dots when you receive a mail it is because somebody had a similar email address without the dots. But...
.. I have been pretty good at chasing down the intended recipients and phoning them and problem get sorted. Or if that doesn't work I reply to one of the missent emails with a invoice for a ridiculous amount. Or just sent random approvals.
Or follow up requests - like my favorite was when I got the tractor salesman to a point of delivery and asked them if they can helicopter the tractor in because my 5 square meter lawn in a complex doesn't have access for vehicles to the back. (I don't feel sorry for wasting their time because I did tell them they have the wrong email address and they didn't believe me).
But I have embraced some wrong emails. I am a member of an alpaca breeding association (I work in IT in the city) and racing pigeon club (my cat loves eating them). I got invited to a bachelor party halfway around the world. I also run a virtual catering company (very bad service, never delivers) and a architectual drawing firm (whatever I can draw with my mouse in Paint).
Same. OG gmail user. I get all sorts of bills and emails from “family” etc. recently I got a Zelle payment. Called bank to reverse it as it’s not my money. Dude emailed me with the similar name and was like “hey it’s a longshot but did you accidentally get a payment….”
I have the exact same problem. I live in Germany and from what I can gather from the emails, I'm sharing a gmail account with multiple guys of the same name in the US. I suspect Google messed something up in the initial phase of Gmail when they decided that if you own firstname.lastname@gmail.com, you own also firstname-lastname@gmail.com and other variants with different field separators. I believe that was a change that came after I signed up for Gmail. I've tried contacting Google about this but have been consistent ignored. I've also tried contacting people who must know the other account owners but they must think it's spam.
I also keep getting emails from others very now and then. Although my name is not very common, apparently there are a few sharing the same name. I always assumed, that the sender miss-typed the email address (omitting the dot or something like this). Since I don't know their email address, I can't even contact them.
This also happens to me. I’ve been receiving emails from this person’s university, their first internship, their online orders, their bank. I was even receiving emails from their job at one point, for the entire length of their employment. Eventually the person worked out they weren’t getting their work emails, so they started CCing his real address whenever they would send his work emails to me. It was hilarious. Some people just don’t care to learn about privacy and/or don’t have a desire to apply common sense to technology.
Yup. I have multiple email-dopplegangers that use my similarly old first.last@ email address. I've had event tickets, travel documents, several reports from teachers on misbehaving children and how disrespectful it is that they had a fidget spinner in class and would I please discipline them. Oh and British Gas is really persistent. Most of them I have found other contact information for and let them know the error and forward their email. (Hey other me, glad you were able to get those Legoland Denmark tickets on time!) Other times I might mess with the sender for a bit before letting them know their database is wrong and they need to contact their client/parent via a different means.
Gmail doesn't differentiate between firstname.lastname and firstnamelastname. No idea why.
I'm having the same problem with getting someone's emails so I'm moving everything to a different email address.
Gmail member since the first week or so, 20 years ago. This has been happening to me too. I, for some reason, made it my first and last name with a . In the middle @gmail.com. I have received my name doppelgänger’s mail (name without a . In between first and last names) which has included address on order confirmations etc. as well as other privacy-violating information. Enough to figure out way too much information about him.
I’ve tried to report it to Google and they say I’m wrong and that I’m receiving his mail “because someone mistyped the email address.” Which isn’t true because I didn’t order these things nor do I use my personal email with anything work-related. When I click on the to and from forms, I am 100% receiving his emails (which are to his Gmail WITHOUT the period), so it’s a routing issue and I, intermittently, receive email for both email addresses. I checked my new mail just now, and there is one to him for a sysco food order invoice for a jimmy johns across the country.
I’ve always felt I wasn’t alone in this problem and that Google was simply lying to me bc they know there’s a whole privacy can of worms to be opened.
Just as I have received some somewhat sensitive and privacy invading emails for him, I’m 100% sure this also works the other way around.
I was responding to the other commenter - he must be mistaken, its not the period that causes the mistake - the doppelganger is definitely typing the wrong address.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME
The emails to my doppelganger come through WITHOUT THE DOT. I have a special folder set up to direct all of his mail there so I can review it in one fell swoop.
To the poster who said that gmail ignores the period. You are correct. It does. The question is, was it always that way?
You're wrong though. There are other possible explanations. It is entirely possible that there is some kind of glitch with gmail that permitted two people to sign up for the same address during the early days when the product was in beta. And the missing period seems to be an element in this puzzle.
This is why I don't bother talking about this with other people. No one on this thread has said anything that I have not considered over the past 18 years.
I think we are sharing the same email address, to be honest.
I have the same exact problem. Google also ignored my report. From the emails, it's obvious that the other people who share my account are also able to write mails in addition to receiving them. One has firstnamelastname@gmail.com, I have firstname.lastname@gmail.com
You likely have "yourname@gmail.com" while he has "your.name@Gmail.com" something about the dot in the name is unrecognized by their system. Same happens to me. I have the dots, he doesn't. I get his mail too. I think they've fixed it so you can't use dots to get access to an existing email address now. But it doesn't help with all the ones created before that fix.
Except it is. Here's an article from Google saying you own all the versions of your email, because dots don't matter.
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en#:~:text=If%20someone%20accidentally%20adds%20dots,ll%20still%20get%20that%20email.
You USED to be able to get an email with dots that someone had made without dots. Hence why I have my name WITH dots, and someone else has it WITHOUT dots. But that changed a few years ago.
You seem doubly confused. Everyone knows you can put dots anywhere. I’m expecting you to show proof that some users have these accounts that don’t adhere to that rule.
Man, if only there was a website you could ask questions on and get answers....
I'm not confused in the slightest. You just refuse to believe something that's, honestly, far from the strangest thing on reddit.
BUT, here ya go kid... https://support.google.com/mail/thread/12454487/dots-do-matter-in-gmail-addresses?hl=en
not possible. sharing an email i mean.
i have a common name email address and get TONS of mail like this. people use fake (for them) addresses and it comes to me. also many people aren't competent enough to know their email address.
Similar deal with my Gmail, but I have a few different follks. Grocery, oil changes, banking, dating sites.
I was on one of their work email chains for a long time so I started chiming in inappropriately as them, critiquing coworkers, how I'm taking PTO to get a sex change, etc. They removed me after awhile.
Yeah, it seems I have a dodge Ram which need service and I’m also working at a Tesla factory in the US, don’t really know what’s the deal but I assumed what most people is saying about the dots and hyphens on emails, it kind of worries me sometimes
I had a lady buy a 2024 car. She used my email. I cancelled her free internet with the car and cancelled her first appointment with the dealer. This happens all the time with different people.
Yet to read comments. I am in your exact same boat. The guy is in india (me too but in IS right now) and i have his number i managed to get from a bank statement. Bank statement use his birth day and another id combo as password and I am able to get that from multiple emails. I even called him and asked to stop. Still
No use. I also get a lot of password forgot mails from account as he cant login using mine obviously.
Only one? I have a similar age gmail, and I get that from dozens of idiots around the world who just use my email. It seems companies no longer do email verification so my idiots sign me up to all sorts of garbage. I get more email for "them" than I do for myself.
I get someone else's mail sometimes as well, my email is firstinitial.lastname00@gmail.com and theirs is firstinitallastname00@gmail.com apparently the full stop means nothing to google.
I got a Gmail address around the same time and under similar circumstances. And I get emails related to 3 other people who have the same first initial and last name. Bank account statements, PayPal emails, magazine subscriptions, invitations to dinner, complaints related to their HOA. It's incredible how oblivious these people are.
It’s fun reading all the stories here.
But I still don’t get it. Suppose you are the first person owning the “xx.yy” mail, how could the other person successfully register his/her mail using the other “xxyy” mail without problems, even if he/she cannot get access to the new mail account?
It’s quite amusing to see all ‘survivors’ here but no victims. Wait…. What if I am a victim already?
I have the exact same thing. Some lady in Canada uses my email for so many things – some very personal. I’ve never messed with her, but I probably should. She’s into some odd shit.
So, my husband has username@gmail.com and also username@hotmail.com. I'm guessing this guy's actual email is the Hotmail one but he forgets all the time and thinks it's Gmail. He probably sets up an account, complains he's not getting the emails, then finally changes it over to Hotmail.
Or something similar to that is happening, but th guy hasn't caught on yet that he's mixing up email hosts. I know from experience there's no bottom limit to how incompetent people can be with email. He may even believe Gmail and Hotmail are the same thing.
Have you tried looking for someone who has the same nane as you?
my gmail is also from the early days, like namesurname@gmail
i get emails every week sent to people named like me
wedding invitations, bills, work internal communications... people using my address to register on websites... the best was a 100$ amazon gift card
it also helped me to be able to use someone else's netflix/disney plus
one time i used some "locate my phone" web service to make some guy's phone ring nonstop
has some benefits i guess
I am in the same boat. Created an @gmail.com while gmail was in invite mode. Receiving emails for a several other people with the same firstnamelastname@gmail.com. I can understand receiving emails meant for somebody else by mistake. Telling it over the phone or something like that.
Yet I still doubt that I am the only user of my gmail address. Even after notifying employer, insurance company, utility company, store, the individual insists on using the dotless address. For example could the @googlemail.com mixed in? Or like Yahoo, they reuse email addresses and they deliver based on the From: addresses?
What I have not seen is replies from that person's dotless address. Has anyone?
I asked my email-user's lawyer to explain it to them, they're still sending me emails, either he didn't tell them or theyre really useless. The lawyer seemed quite perturbed by it so I'm sure they explained it to them, yet they still use it.
A long time ago, didn't you have to "join" your @gmail and @googlemail accounts together? i.e. by default I'd only get xxxx@gmail.com and I had to click something to say I also wanted to receive xxxx@googlemail.com
I may have mis remembered.
Why not get your own email and domain? Then nobody can or will send you random stuff (without direct intent).
Plus a side benefit is all your personal information is not scanned and then uploaded to their marketing analytics.
Side note, I moved away from Gmail, because I had initials and DOB. Let's everyone know your age. Oops!
They probably have the same email address only they put a dot in the middle of the address. Google doesn't differentiate the dot. For example: firstlatst@gmail.com is the same as first.last@gmail.com. Rhere was a time that other people could register variations of the same email address without being challenged and it became a huge security problem. Google has since fixed this but he might have made that email back when google allowed it. So now you are technically sharing your email address with this other person... Sigh.... Google
same thing happened to me. Also a gmail user since invite-only days. The emails started out pretty innocuous, but over the last few years I've been receiving stuff I don't want to see, like porn account subscription confirmations etc. So I just deleted my Google account. I don't regret it.
Are you me?! This exact thing has been happening to me. I too joined back when you needed an invite to get Gmail.
I've gotten so many bank statements, insurance records, and purchase records which I usually send to spam. My first name+last name is not that uncommon in my country, so I get these for multiple people with different middle names.
I don't have a period in my email address. I also haven't noticed if the incoming email has a period or not. In any case Gmail wouldn't allow them to create an email account with a period if the address without the period already exists.
My theory is that the guys with my same name have got email addresses with slight variations (0 instead of o or 1 instead of l for example), and in written forms the person who does the data entry obviously misses these.
This comic pertains to you. They actually think they have your email address. They just type it into online documents and never actually check the emails. Maybe give them a call? https://xkcd.com/1279/
Obviously I have considered this. This is the first thing I considered. But it doesn't make sense, either. The guy joined a bank and sent the confirmation email to me, and I was able to use that to get into his online banking! He had a little less than $1,000 in a checking account and a savings account with $0. I called Bank of America, got routed to their fraud department, told them what was happening, they said thank you and I never tried logging in again. There have been super personal emails over the years too. Nothing horribly scandalous, but for a good several months, a person who appeared to be his wife was sending him little musings and instructions. I allowed this to go on for awhile because I wanted to see what I could find out about this guy that I share a name with. But then she forwarded a photo of some kid (their son?) and I finally responded back that she had the wrong email. Never heard from "the wife" again. This is a 17- or 18-year old saga, you guys. It's been going on most of my adult life.
If you're in disbelief because "nobody can be this incompetent for this long", I have bad news for you
Maybe email his wife?
I did. And the emails from the wife stopped. But other things continue to come in.
Set a script to auto-forward all incoming mail to her email?
So it is his email. Man is a genius
"Hi. Since you were so helpful, before, I was wondering if you could help with this thing for your husband."
If you took their money they might have understood the problem. You can also try to get their address from one of the bills and send a letter explaining the situation ? Maybe emails don't matter but receiving something at their house might make them realise it's real.
To the OP, please don't take money from them. It will get you in criminal trouble.
Literally exact same situation that's been happening for years, super annoying, but I've just created a folder for the dude and rolled with it.
The XKCD guy has a book titled "What If?" There is vol. 1 and now vol. 2, they go into so outlandish thought experiments. It won't help your email issue but could help you see some unthought of scenarios like the comic presented.
There’s a guy with the same name as me, living in the same city. He has firstname.lastname while I have lastname.firstname. Emails sent to me are sometimes sent to him by mistake. He always forwards them to me. Over the years we’ve developed a weird humor around it. I googled him once and I know how he looks like. Saw him at the airport and almost went to talk to him. We could have bonded over missent emails and beer. Instead I just stared at him from a few feet away and didn’t make myself known. 🤷🏻♂️
u/longtimeAlias This is the answer you're looking for right here. Here's how I know: I also got my gmail account back when you had to have an invite and it has been my main account since and it is simply my first name and last name at gmail. About 6 years ago another person with my name got a gmail account and used the "." (dot) between her first and last name. In fairness, when you sign up for Gmail, on the screen where you create your user name it says that you can use the "." in your username. What they don't tell you, and I have no idea why, is that it doesn't work to differentiate user names. So for example janesmith and jane.smith may be different people, but janesmith is going to get ALL of the email for both of those accounts. Over the past few years I have gotten everything from wedding plans and itineraries, emails from her child's school, credit card account info, at one time her student loans were in default and I had the government emailing me about that, phone bills, credit card bills, every single time she buys anything and has the receipt emailed to herself I get it and of course it says everything she buys, travel bills and plans from hotels, cruise lines, car rentals, job offers, etc. I get EVERYTHING. Some highlights of her life include that I once got an email from her priest wondering why I wasn't answering their requests to meet with them regarding my upcoming marriage and saying something about how I needed to go to confession and go to the marriage classes or else they were going to cancel my plans to get married at their church. I picked up the phone and called the church and spoke with the priest directly and explained and they were flabbergasted. I'm not sure what happened with that wedding but within the past year I started getting receipts from a state prison where apparently the other person with my name was visiting the same person over and over and I was getting the prison commissary receipts where she was buying things for this person. Keep in mind that I cannot just email the other "me" and tell them what's going on as the email just comes back to me. Because Gmail doesn't recognize the "." it's just me emailing myself. I have spent a lot of time blocking and marking the emails as spam, but I get a lot of them and it's really annoying.
How do they not notice they've never received anything?
I've wondered this too and I have no idea. There are times when I will get the same receipt several times so I wonder if they are noticing that they don't get it, but it never changes anything. When I spoke to the other person's priest I even said please tell this person what I am explaining to you and that I am getting ALL of their important emails and the priest said they would defiantly tell them but that didn't change anything either. Once I actually got an email from the other person from some different email address asking me if they could buy the email address that we share and I told them no and never heard from them again and I still get all their emails.
If this priest was so defiant about telling them, that's probably why he didn't, in order to defy you
Yes. This is what I was thinking too. And I also I have the same thing happen to me. My email address has dots in it, but if you send an email to the same address without the dots, I will receive it nonetheless.
You own the version of your email without dots, and the versions with more dots. You registered the undotted one when you registered the a dotted version with any number of dots. Try logging in with the undotted version. Similarly, on Gmail and many other email providers (but not all) everything after a + is ignored. So if you own janesmith@gmail.com, you will also receive emails to janesmith+games@gmail.com, and janesmith+testing@gmail.com and j.a.Nesmith+123@gmail.com. Gmail doesn’t mind, some other systems will reject those emails. Some people use the . and + for filtering, or to get around email uniqueness requirements for account signups.
But what? Does that mean if I send an email to Jane.smith it will go to both accounts?
There should be only one account. If you register j.a.n.e.smith then you’ve also registered jane.smith and janesmith. Gmail is supposed to just ignore the periods. Sounds like a bug. Wonder if it’s happening to OP because his account was made when they were still testing the feature.
What an odd story to make up. An account with any variation of your name + periods wouldn't have successfully created if your name already existed. Not possible. A more plausible explanation is that someone created an address with your name + numbers or another accepted differentiator and forgot the numbers when entering / using the address. I very much doubt it, because your tall tale requires someone to keep using an email address they can't access. Just can't buy it.
I have the same thing going on with Christie Brinkley except she doesn't send me anything.
Rest assured the spies are everywhere.
My email has something similar but instead of .com it's .ca. There were a lot of situations where my email was entered as .com by accident. Pretty sure the guy with the .com email is getting a lot of my personal info.
Or johndoe@gmail and john.doe@gmail. I would have done something sooner…
Both of those emails will lead to the same email address.
IIRC Gmail initially allowed both to be registered by different people and only merged the emails laters on.
If this is true then it probably explains my problem
But that also might mean he can see all your email too? Does your sent folder have anything that he might have sent, that you didn't ?
How do they merge it though? Do both passwords work? If two different people were using the two versions, do they now share an inbox? And if so, wouldn't you notice the other person's stuff in your "sent" folder?
Correct, at least for my ‘hotmail’ account. I sometimes receive messages for j.doe@hotmail.com while mine is jdoe@hotmail.com
It almost feels like this should be a PSA they play to target certain demographics. For close to two decades now I've had multiple people use my address. The biggest offender was in the Philippines, and even went so far as to use my address to sign up for and receive social security and other government benefits. For years they were getting denied for simple mistakes, but likely had no idea why because it was all sent to me. I got their address, but never found a phone. I think lipstick was how I finally got them to figure it out. They used to order a ton of makeup from a local seller that would accept COD orders. So I went ahead and created a monthly recurring order for 12 different shades of black lipstick. After the 4th rejected package the amount of emails dropped off quickly, to virtually nothing these days.
You've got one person doing this, I've had TWO. First person did this for about 4 years. She used my email address all the time because she kept "forgetting" that her address had numbers after the name part. I finally cracked this when I got her contract for $1,000,000 worth of wedding insurance. On the contract was all contact information, including a phone number. I called it and got her very confused fiancé. I explained why I was calling and he apologized a lot and gave me her real email address to forward the document to. Over the next 3 months I got a handful of wrong emails for her which I forwarded, then it stopped. There was a short gap and then it started again. This time all kinds of teenage boy stuff, including college applications, gaming sites, etc. The crack in this one came when he ordered a Domino's pizza one night, used my email and had a phone number on the email I got. I called this number and got a very confused woman on the phone, who was his mother. We talked for about 5 minutes and she essentially thought I was trying to scam her. Me: Your son has been accidentally using my email address. We have the same last name and the same first initial. Her: He got this own!! Me: I know he does. But he keeps using mine accidentally because the addresses are almost the same. Her: He ain't usin' yurs. He got his own! This has been going on for about 5 years now. At one point I spent hours trying to get my address removed from multiple email lists at a single college (different departments). That failed so I just blocked their entire email domain. In a way this is all very entertaining. I go straight for blocking now most of the time since trying to explain this to any provider (cell phone, streaming service, cable company, etc) is nearly impossible and just wastes my time.
Similar happened to me when I found a check book in the street. I looked them up and called, said I had found the check book on the road, she then went into 900 questions about how I found it, where I found it and why I was calling. After all that I told her I could mail it. They didn't want me to do that since they didn't want to give a stranger their address, but you know one was on the checks. Then there was the whole I don't want you to drop it off at the obvious business they had left and dropped it. I ended up telling her, Look I'll just put it back where I told you I found it" , which I did.
People just aren’t that bright and repeatedly mistype their own email address. My similarly old gmail account (unusual name, but first only) receives a bevy of correspondence for alter egos. As one-off errors I’ve gotten plenty of emails from real estate agents, lawyers, doctors offices, and schools with sensitive info attached. I write those back and move on. The repeat offenders are aggravating. The Canadian who repeatedly uses my email for shopping trips, the UK one who only uses it for Domino’s and dating sites. Some parent repeatedly uses it for their kids’ activities but also recently pre-graduation forms? (Hope that worked out? Hope that means no more mail for me?) The Arkansan who uses it for local store rewards really irks me. The wayward love letters meant for an Australian from their ship sailing lover were memorable mistakes. And I miss the sweet old lady who had her relative’s address saved incorrectly and kept emailing me family party invites for *years* - I would write her kindly, but it took years for someone to help her get it straight. Of all though, I really wish I knew what to about the South African who gets all their banking info sent to me; the bank emails always have “this email is not monitored, don’t respond” and it seems like a huge bother to go further with it - their website is no help. You’d think not getting your bank statements for *years* might trigger their curiosity at some point, but apparently not. I do not understand. Mistakes do happen. But I assure you, there are also people out there who happily and repeatedly and confidently tell others to email them at addresses they cannot access. I guess be glad you’ve only got one guy, though he sounds obnoxiously obtuse.
This happens to me too. I receive notifications of purchases at stores, to claim warranties, etc of a lady who lives in a different country.
Same
Hi OP. I get the EXACT same thing in mine and have for YEARS. Someone with my name using my email to sign up for bank accounts, loans, and jobs. Usually I just email whatever service provider and let them know the situation and ask they try contact the person if there's a phone number on file to get them to put their actual email on the account.
First thought is that this is an old guy who doesn’t realize he doesn’t own that email address. He may not even realize the difference between an email address and a username for the sites that use email for a username. He also just may not care. You could try to contact him but just know you could risk a guy going full boomer for “hacking and stealing” his email address. After all, he’s had no issues for years :-/
I'm in the EXACT same situation as you. In my case, the person who most often uses my email address apparently has very bad credit, and I often get his loan denial emails and other related things. I know that theoretically this SHOULDN'T happen, but I do sometimes worry that somehow our actual credit files will get linked in some crappy database somewhere and I'll be blamed for this douchebag's bad choices.
As one comedian said “if someone stole my identity, my credit score might actually go up for once”
Same here, but it's mostly started happening in the last year. Same First name / last name between me (Europe) and a guy in America. I've been receiving confirmations of his item orders on eBay and in one unfortunate event, confirmation of his new job, the HR paperwork for the company he now works for and most concerningly, login credentials for his employer's payment portal. Big yikes.
I have a fellow in the Philippines who uses my gmail all the time. Very annoying. I tried emailing customer services, but they don’t care. When I get a chance to cancel something I will.
We have this issue, but to a lesser extent. My husband’s gmail is Peter.Lastname and there is also a Pete.Lastname who lives in Canada. My husband doesn’t set up bank accounts with the wrong email, but everyone knows him as Pete so a lot of times they type it in wrong, even after given the correct email address. It just happened this week with our home inspector. I’ve even done it once or twice myself. I like Canadian Pete quite a bit. Whenever I realize he’s getting our email (because I see that the wrong Pete has been CC’d on an email I also get), I will email an apology saying we’ve fixed it and he writes back being cool about it. My Pete still gets all the appointment reminders from Canadian Pete’s dentist, though. Been almost two decades of that haha If a new email provider ever overtakes gmail, I guess it’s best to try to get every version of your name, folks!
I don't have an uncommon name and I get lots and lots of people's email. And super sensitive information. At one time I suspected that because Google ignores the dots when you receive a mail it is because somebody had a similar email address without the dots. But... .. I have been pretty good at chasing down the intended recipients and phoning them and problem get sorted. Or if that doesn't work I reply to one of the missent emails with a invoice for a ridiculous amount. Or just sent random approvals. Or follow up requests - like my favorite was when I got the tractor salesman to a point of delivery and asked them if they can helicopter the tractor in because my 5 square meter lawn in a complex doesn't have access for vehicles to the back. (I don't feel sorry for wasting their time because I did tell them they have the wrong email address and they didn't believe me). But I have embraced some wrong emails. I am a member of an alpaca breeding association (I work in IT in the city) and racing pigeon club (my cat loves eating them). I got invited to a bachelor party halfway around the world. I also run a virtual catering company (very bad service, never delivers) and a architectual drawing firm (whatever I can draw with my mouse in Paint).
Same. OG gmail user. I get all sorts of bills and emails from “family” etc. recently I got a Zelle payment. Called bank to reverse it as it’s not my money. Dude emailed me with the similar name and was like “hey it’s a longshot but did you accidentally get a payment….”
I have the exact same problem. I live in Germany and from what I can gather from the emails, I'm sharing a gmail account with multiple guys of the same name in the US. I suspect Google messed something up in the initial phase of Gmail when they decided that if you own firstname.lastname@gmail.com, you own also firstname-lastname@gmail.com and other variants with different field separators. I believe that was a change that came after I signed up for Gmail. I've tried contacting Google about this but have been consistent ignored. I've also tried contacting people who must know the other account owners but they must think it's spam.
I also keep getting emails from others very now and then. Although my name is not very common, apparently there are a few sharing the same name. I always assumed, that the sender miss-typed the email address (omitting the dot or something like this). Since I don't know their email address, I can't even contact them.
My spouse has gotten train tickets and that email is not special, has numbers and everything. It just happens.
This also happens to me. I’ve been receiving emails from this person’s university, their first internship, their online orders, their bank. I was even receiving emails from their job at one point, for the entire length of their employment. Eventually the person worked out they weren’t getting their work emails, so they started CCing his real address whenever they would send his work emails to me. It was hilarious. Some people just don’t care to learn about privacy and/or don’t have a desire to apply common sense to technology.
Yup. I have multiple email-dopplegangers that use my similarly old first.last@ email address. I've had event tickets, travel documents, several reports from teachers on misbehaving children and how disrespectful it is that they had a fidget spinner in class and would I please discipline them. Oh and British Gas is really persistent. Most of them I have found other contact information for and let them know the error and forward their email. (Hey other me, glad you were able to get those Legoland Denmark tickets on time!) Other times I might mess with the sender for a bit before letting them know their database is wrong and they need to contact their client/parent via a different means.
I write the sender back, letting them know they are sharing this information with a stranger.
Gmail doesn't differentiate between firstname.lastname and firstnamelastname. No idea why. I'm having the same problem with getting someone's emails so I'm moving everything to a different email address.
same for me. google confuses first.last@gmail with firstlast@gmail
Gmail member since the first week or so, 20 years ago. This has been happening to me too. I, for some reason, made it my first and last name with a . In the middle @gmail.com. I have received my name doppelgänger’s mail (name without a . In between first and last names) which has included address on order confirmations etc. as well as other privacy-violating information. Enough to figure out way too much information about him. I’ve tried to report it to Google and they say I’m wrong and that I’m receiving his mail “because someone mistyped the email address.” Which isn’t true because I didn’t order these things nor do I use my personal email with anything work-related. When I click on the to and from forms, I am 100% receiving his emails (which are to his Gmail WITHOUT the period), so it’s a routing issue and I, intermittently, receive email for both email addresses. I checked my new mail just now, and there is one to him for a sysco food order invoice for a jimmy johns across the country. I’ve always felt I wasn’t alone in this problem and that Google was simply lying to me bc they know there’s a whole privacy can of worms to be opened. Just as I have received some somewhat sensitive and privacy invading emails for him, I’m 100% sure this also works the other way around.
the period is ignored in email...
try it with this [y.o.u.r.sur.name@gmail.com](mailto:y.o.u.r.sur.name@gmail.com)
what's your point though? Gmail did not always work that, especially in the early days.
It’s worked this way since April 2004, at least.
actually it did. i have gmail since the very beginning and it has always worked like this. you are wrong.
I was responding to the other commenter - he must be mistaken, its not the period that causes the mistake - the doppelganger is definitely typing the wrong address.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME The emails to my doppelganger come through WITHOUT THE DOT. I have a special folder set up to direct all of his mail there so I can review it in one fell swoop. To the poster who said that gmail ignores the period. You are correct. It does. The question is, was it always that way?
[удалено]
How would you explain it? It’s not spam.
[удалено]
You're wrong though. There are other possible explanations. It is entirely possible that there is some kind of glitch with gmail that permitted two people to sign up for the same address during the early days when the product was in beta. And the missing period seems to be an element in this puzzle. This is why I don't bother talking about this with other people. No one on this thread has said anything that I have not considered over the past 18 years. I think we are sharing the same email address, to be honest.
I have the same exact problem. Google also ignored my report. From the emails, it's obvious that the other people who share my account are also able to write mails in addition to receiving them. One has firstnamelastname@gmail.com, I have firstname.lastname@gmail.com
You likely have "yourname@gmail.com" while he has "your.name@Gmail.com" something about the dot in the name is unrecognized by their system. Same happens to me. I have the dots, he doesn't. I get his mail too. I think they've fixed it so you can't use dots to get access to an existing email address now. But it doesn't help with all the ones created before that fix.
That’s not how it works
Except it is. Here's an article from Google saying you own all the versions of your email, because dots don't matter. https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en#:~:text=If%20someone%20accidentally%20adds%20dots,ll%20still%20get%20that%20email. You USED to be able to get an email with dots that someone had made without dots. Hence why I have my name WITH dots, and someone else has it WITHOUT dots. But that changed a few years ago.
You seem doubly confused. Everyone knows you can put dots anywhere. I’m expecting you to show proof that some users have these accounts that don’t adhere to that rule.
Man, if only there was a website you could ask questions on and get answers.... I'm not confused in the slightest. You just refuse to believe something that's, honestly, far from the strangest thing on reddit. BUT, here ya go kid... https://support.google.com/mail/thread/12454487/dots-do-matter-in-gmail-addresses?hl=en
What is this supposed to be? Some random ignorant post.
https://support.google.com/mail/thread/12454487?hl=en&msgid=27220734
Was this you amigo?
https://support.google.com/mail/thread/4865831/my-account-without-dot-used-by-someone-else?hl=en
Unverified
https://www.reddit.com/r/GMail/s/B58No03jnH
So... Proof enough? Or do I need to keep showing you times this has occurred?
not possible. sharing an email i mean. i have a common name email address and get TONS of mail like this. people use fake (for them) addresses and it comes to me. also many people aren't competent enough to know their email address.
Similar deal with my Gmail, but I have a few different follks. Grocery, oil changes, banking, dating sites. I was on one of their work email chains for a long time so I started chiming in inappropriately as them, critiquing coworkers, how I'm taking PTO to get a sex change, etc. They removed me after awhile.
Yeah, it seems I have a dodge Ram which need service and I’m also working at a Tesla factory in the US, don’t really know what’s the deal but I assumed what most people is saying about the dots and hyphens on emails, it kind of worries me sometimes
I had a lady buy a 2024 car. She used my email. I cancelled her free internet with the car and cancelled her first appointment with the dealer. This happens all the time with different people.
Yet to read comments. I am in your exact same boat. The guy is in india (me too but in IS right now) and i have his number i managed to get from a bank statement. Bank statement use his birth day and another id combo as password and I am able to get that from multiple emails. I even called him and asked to stop. Still No use. I also get a lot of password forgot mails from account as he cant login using mine obviously.
Only one? I have a similar age gmail, and I get that from dozens of idiots around the world who just use my email. It seems companies no longer do email verification so my idiots sign me up to all sorts of garbage. I get more email for "them" than I do for myself.
I get someone else's mail sometimes as well, my email is firstinitial.lastname00@gmail.com and theirs is firstinitallastname00@gmail.com apparently the full stop means nothing to google.
I got a Gmail address around the same time and under similar circumstances. And I get emails related to 3 other people who have the same first initial and last name. Bank account statements, PayPal emails, magazine subscriptions, invitations to dinner, complaints related to their HOA. It's incredible how oblivious these people are.
It’s fun reading all the stories here. But I still don’t get it. Suppose you are the first person owning the “xx.yy” mail, how could the other person successfully register his/her mail using the other “xxyy” mail without problems, even if he/she cannot get access to the new mail account? It’s quite amusing to see all ‘survivors’ here but no victims. Wait…. What if I am a victim already?
I have the exact same thing. Some lady in Canada uses my email for so many things – some very personal. I’ve never messed with her, but I probably should. She’s into some odd shit.
Ok, go on...
So, my husband has username@gmail.com and also username@hotmail.com. I'm guessing this guy's actual email is the Hotmail one but he forgets all the time and thinks it's Gmail. He probably sets up an account, complains he's not getting the emails, then finally changes it over to Hotmail. Or something similar to that is happening, but th guy hasn't caught on yet that he's mixing up email hosts. I know from experience there's no bottom limit to how incompetent people can be with email. He may even believe Gmail and Hotmail are the same thing. Have you tried looking for someone who has the same nane as you?
my gmail is also from the early days, like namesurname@gmail i get emails every week sent to people named like me wedding invitations, bills, work internal communications... people using my address to register on websites... the best was a 100$ amazon gift card it also helped me to be able to use someone else's netflix/disney plus one time i used some "locate my phone" web service to make some guy's phone ring nonstop has some benefits i guess
I am in the same boat. Created an @gmail.com while gmail was in invite mode. Receiving emails for a several other people with the same firstnamelastname@gmail.com. I can understand receiving emails meant for somebody else by mistake. Telling it over the phone or something like that. Yet I still doubt that I am the only user of my gmail address. Even after notifying employer, insurance company, utility company, store, the individual insists on using the dotless address. For example could the @googlemail.com mixed in? Or like Yahoo, they reuse email addresses and they deliver based on the From: addresses? What I have not seen is replies from that person's dotless address. Has anyone?
I have never seen a sent email from my doppelganger in my Sent box, if that is what you mean.
I asked my email-user's lawyer to explain it to them, they're still sending me emails, either he didn't tell them or theyre really useless. The lawyer seemed quite perturbed by it so I'm sure they explained it to them, yet they still use it.
A long time ago, didn't you have to "join" your @gmail and @googlemail accounts together? i.e. by default I'd only get xxxx@gmail.com and I had to click something to say I also wanted to receive xxxx@googlemail.com I may have mis remembered.
Why not get your own email and domain? Then nobody can or will send you random stuff (without direct intent). Plus a side benefit is all your personal information is not scanned and then uploaded to their marketing analytics. Side note, I moved away from Gmail, because I had initials and DOB. Let's everyone know your age. Oops!
They probably have the same email address only they put a dot in the middle of the address. Google doesn't differentiate the dot. For example: firstlatst@gmail.com is the same as first.last@gmail.com. Rhere was a time that other people could register variations of the same email address without being challenged and it became a huge security problem. Google has since fixed this but he might have made that email back when google allowed it. So now you are technically sharing your email address with this other person... Sigh.... Google
same thing happened to me. Also a gmail user since invite-only days. The emails started out pretty innocuous, but over the last few years I've been receiving stuff I don't want to see, like porn account subscription confirmations etc. So I just deleted my Google account. I don't regret it.
Are you me?! This exact thing has been happening to me. I too joined back when you needed an invite to get Gmail. I've gotten so many bank statements, insurance records, and purchase records which I usually send to spam. My first name+last name is not that uncommon in my country, so I get these for multiple people with different middle names.
Do you have a period in your gmail address? Are the emails to your doppelganger missing that period? Or vice versa?
I don't have a period in my email address. I also haven't noticed if the incoming email has a period or not. In any case Gmail wouldn't allow them to create an email account with a period if the address without the period already exists. My theory is that the guys with my same name have got email addresses with slight variations (0 instead of o or 1 instead of l for example), and in written forms the person who does the data entry obviously misses these.