Slashdot Asks: Have You Ever Gotten Someone Else's Email? (ieee.org) 257
Wave723 shares an article from IEEE's Spectrum:
I was scrolling through emails on my phone one recent morning when a strange message appeared among the usual mix of advertisements and morning newsletters. It was a confirmation for an upcoming doctor's appointment in New York City, but came from an address I'd never seen before. And at the top, there was a friendly note: "I guess this is for you :)" The note, I would later learn, was written by a Norwegian named Andre Nordum whose email address is just a few letters different from my own... he'd Googled my name to try to track down my personal email address and forward the message to me.
All day, I thought about Andre's act of digital kindness and the heartwarming fact that a stranger had spent time and effort trying to send me a bit of important information. I also felt a twinge of guilt: I'd received emails in the past -- from car dealerships and daycares -- that were clearly meant for other people, and I'd never forwarded any of them along.
The 33-year-old Norwegian banker later joked that he did it because "I did not want to get emails about your dermatology history for the foreseeable future." But another Norwegian has been returning mis-directed emails for over a decade with mundane stories about the family dog and games of pickleball -- meant for another E. Nordrum.
"It's a little bit like sitting on the bus or overhearing somebody in the restaurant or something," he says, admitting that when they finally stopped coming, "I was a little bit sad, actually." In 2017 the other E. Nordrum flew from America to Norway on a vacation, finally meeting the man who'd been returning all his mis-addressed emails -- and they ended up talking for hours.
The article calls it a reminder "of how downright pleasant it can sometimes be to interact with strangers on the Internet." But it also asks an interesting question: "Do these email mix-ups happen to everyone? " I know I'm still getting emails about a storage space somebody opened 1300 miles away. And Slashdot reader antdude writes, "A few days ago, I got an USC.edu's doctor email (CCed with a few other people) about an upcoming surgery for a transplant. I was like huh?"
How about the rest of Slashdot's readers. Have you ever gotten someone else's email?
All day, I thought about Andre's act of digital kindness and the heartwarming fact that a stranger had spent time and effort trying to send me a bit of important information. I also felt a twinge of guilt: I'd received emails in the past -- from car dealerships and daycares -- that were clearly meant for other people, and I'd never forwarded any of them along.
The 33-year-old Norwegian banker later joked that he did it because "I did not want to get emails about your dermatology history for the foreseeable future." But another Norwegian has been returning mis-directed emails for over a decade with mundane stories about the family dog and games of pickleball -- meant for another E. Nordrum.
"It's a little bit like sitting on the bus or overhearing somebody in the restaurant or something," he says, admitting that when they finally stopped coming, "I was a little bit sad, actually." In 2017 the other E. Nordrum flew from America to Norway on a vacation, finally meeting the man who'd been returning all his mis-addressed emails -- and they ended up talking for hours.
The article calls it a reminder "of how downright pleasant it can sometimes be to interact with strangers on the Internet." But it also asks an interesting question: "Do these email mix-ups happen to everyone? " I know I'm still getting emails about a storage space somebody opened 1300 miles away. And Slashdot reader antdude writes, "A few days ago, I got an USC.edu's doctor email (CCed with a few other people) about an upcoming surgery for a transplant. I was like huh?"
How about the rest of Slashdot's readers. Have you ever gotten someone else's email?
wrong text (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've frequently gotten emails sent to different people - often the same different people over and over again.
My favourite was when I decided to have a little fun with their mistake. Someone was redoing their house and I got their cost estimate from the contractor. I responded, thanking them for the cost estimate, but added that A) I'm going to be shutting off my net access soon, so you should probably contact me by other means in the future, and B) I have a request, and I know it's going to sound a little
Re:wrong text (Score:4, Funny)
RRRRRRING!!!!!
(I pick up the phone)
— Hi! Can I speak to your sister?
— Sure (hands the phone to my sister who was passing by).
They talk for 30 minutes, then realize it was a wrong number
Re:wrong text (Score:5, Interesting)
Ugh. Landlines.
Back before ubiquitous cellphones and number portability and when moving to a new town meant getting a new local number that might have belonged to someone else in the past...
I had just moved towns and gotten a new number for my new place. Turned out MY new phone number had used to belong to someone who'd skipped out on some bills. Which, of course, meant that the debt collectors, scummy and dimwitted creatures that they are, started harassing ME. No amount of: first, semi-courteously correcting their screwup; then, telling them unequivocally to stop calling me; then, telling them to go fuck themselves in increasingly creative ways; and eventually, blowing the loudest and most shrill whistle I could find into the phone; would get them to knock off the crap. Eventually, I wound up having to play along long enough to find out where they were located; and start calling their local police and sheriffs' offices and reporting them repeatedly for harassment. Even then, it didn't stop entirely. But it brought the number down to a level that I didn't have to get a new phone number.
Sure I do! (Score:5, Funny)
I keep getting emails that are clearly meant for some prince living in Nigeria or something.
The funniest part is, I forward his emails to the Publishers Clearing House!
All the time (Score:4, Insightful)
My Gmail address is in the format of firstname.lastname, and unfortunately not everyone who shares my first and last names or knows someone who does realizes that it doesn't belong to them. Sometimes it's a missed middle initial, sometimes it's pure ignorance on the part of the person providing the address. I think sometimes people give it as a fake address, and I have contempt for these people.
I have received all kinds of emails for wedding invitations, human resource confidential data, billing, mortgages, and more.
If the sender is a personal address, I respond with a polite correction. If it's important billing information (ie, "service about to expire for non-payment"), I do what I can to make contact to the correct person so they can be aware. I'm amazed at how few responses I get, and out of the few responses I get I'm amazed at how many people seem to resent me trying to be helpful.
Re: (Score:2)
My Gmail address is in the format of firstname.lastname, and unfortunately not everyone who shares my first and last names or knows someone who does realizes that it doesn't belong to them. Sometimes it's a missed middle initial, sometimes it's pure ignorance on the part of the person providing the address. I think sometimes people give it as a fake address, and I have contempt for these people.
I have received all kinds of emails for wedding invitations, human resource confidential data, billing, mortgages, and more.
If the sender is a personal address, I respond with a polite correction. If it's important billing information (ie, "service about to expire for non-payment"), I do what I can to make contact to the correct person so they can be aware. I'm amazed at how few responses I get, and out of the few responses I get I'm amazed at how many people seem to resent me trying to be helpful.
You're the third person in this thread with that problem of firstname.lastname@.... I have simply firstname@gmail.com and I have yet to receive someone else's emails.
Yes, my firstname really is that unique.
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Another one right here, I wrote about it in the thread "Constantly" before I saw this thread. I have a dot in my name, he doesn't.
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There was another Goose once but he never recovered from that flat spin.
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I just use my first two initials and the first four letters of my last name. My son did the same with his first two initials, I have an unusual last name.
However my postman doesn't even look at my name and is dyslexic, I live at 455 my road but I have got numerous letters addressed to 445 different road.
Re: (Score:2)
I think people have gotten a bit jaded regarding e-mail, which is probably the natural result when 95% of it is probably spam. I tend to assume that anything I get about "my new Dodge vehicle from XXX dealership in YYY state" is more likely to be spam than an honest mistake, and I just mark it as such.
In fact, if you think about it, it seems possible some of your messages are getting caught up in spam filters too, since I've seen a number of spam messages that follow patterns that you might have used if yo
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you think that's bad, try having a first name last initial @gmail.com address, like donalds@gmail.com. (Sorry Donald, but I'm sure that your inbox is already as fucked as mine is) You'll basically get a dozen misdirected emails a day from people all over the world with your same first name and same last initial.
I swear that I must have at least one logon for every online dating and file sharing service in the universe by now thanks to people fat fingering their email address and using mine by mistake. I'
Tons (Score:2)
Facebook doesn't authenticate email addresses you put in. I've been getting notifications for some Mexican dude for years about every little comment he gets on FB.
At one point, I received some emails intended for the CEO of some Chinese company. They had a bunch of financial reports in them about things I couldn't understand. That was fun.
Multiple times (Score:2)
However, the worst reason why I get e-mails addressed to somebody else in my personal account is due to Google ignoring dots in e-mail addresses, so myemail@gmail.com, my.email@gmail.com and m.y.e.m.a.i.l@gmail.com are the same. I am getting e-mail for somebody that is at least 3
It's not always a touching story (Score:4, Informative)
For several years I was getting e-mail intended for someone else with almost the same name as me (first, last, middle initial) and whose email address was identical except it was lacking delineators, but on the opposite end of the country. All of the messages were commercial in nature. I did some investigating and quickly found an obituary for the guy, so it was left to me to tell these businesses to stop e-mailing me because the customer they were trying to court was dead.
Much much earlier, I found a distant relative (confirmed via family trees) who had my exact name. Not long after that I tried to sign up for and AOL Instant Messenger account (yes, it was THAT long ago) and discovered that he had already gotten an account with our shared name! I had to misspell my name, dammit.
All day every day. (Score:2)
I have a five character gmail address that is both a common first and last name. I get misdirected emails every day. So far I have gotten emails for:
* Companies (same name)
* Doctors.
* Sons, daughters, dads, etc.
* Contract details.
* Job offers.
* Politicians.
Sometimes I reply politely and let them know of the error. Sometimes I play games to see whats the most crazy thing I can rely and get people to believe (only to update later and let them know).
Re: (Score:2)
Most fun at the corporate level (Score:2)
Working for a big tech company a few years back, a person quite senior decided to leave and set up a discussion list (intended for a single use) to say good bye to everyone he'd ever worked with over the past... 21 years I think, it had people both high and low, co-founders & current CEO to rank and file... and correctly ACLed to only let him send to it.
A few months after he left, someone external (to the company) accidentally CCed that very same DL (never heard if it was similar to something they meant
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, 3 Steves in my department - often hear one say to the other "forwarding mail, think it is for you instead". All 3 do fairly different jobs...
Ever since switching to my own domain (Score:2)
Ever since switching to my own domain several years ago, I haven't received a single e-mail intended for someone else. It used to happen with my Gmail account on occasion, but even then it was relatively rare for me, given that I'm the only person in the world with my first and last name.
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Ever since switching to my own domain several years ago, I haven't received a single e-mail intended for someone else. It used to happen with my Gmail account on occasion, but even then it was relatively rare for me, given that I'm the only person in the world with my first and last name.
Mister Mxyzptlk?.?.?
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All the time! (Score:2)
Maybe once in 20 years. (Score:2)
My main mail-adresses have all have the trait that they are
a) easy to memorise
b) easy to pronounce
c) easy to understand
d) easy to spell out correctly
e) compareatively rare/unusual
My last name has the exact same traits and I have a domain that is my last name.
On the plus side, I maybe get 5 e-mails per week on my main account that I have had for 18 years now.
So no, I haven't gotten somebody elses email. Maybe once a decade or two back. But generally no.
But I do understand that there are people/names/addresse
Re: (Score:2)
I thought my gmail was relatively obscure too, until one day last year I started getting messagse about board meetings and membership application requests to be discussed.
It took a few days (the emails were sent to a mailing list, so there was no address other than the from address, and I somehow could get the emails, but they were silently blocked because no amount of replying worked. Finally someone sent an email with a bunch of other email addresses and I could get a hold of someone to fix the error.
Thei
yup. mormons (Score:2)
my email address is someone's gmail recovery (Score:2)
Apparently, someone mistyped their gmail recovery email to my address. The guy probably sent a couple dozen recovery emails to my address. He may have been on the level, but I wasn't going to reply.
First and last name confusion, recycled address (Score:4, Interesting)
It was mend for a doctor with my first name as his last name and I have an alias mail address with just my first name, in his case there should be a first name in front of the last name.
Interesting to see how well some people are doing but then I send it back to the bank who apologised.
For years I had been trying to get that nice and short mail address but it was already in use until one day it was available and I immediately claimed it. Later I heard my ISP locks released account names for 12 months before handing them out again.
Not much later I was receiving commercial mails on my newly acquired address, one of them from a travel agency.
Out of curiosity I followed the link in the mail to the account on the travel website but it required a password, I clicked the 'Forgotten password' link and received a new one.
Once in the account I saw an address in Amsterdam where the man was living and also noticed it allowed booking of flights, hotels etc against a credit card associated with the account, scary!
Again a little later I received a personal invitation to some event, I replied explaining I was not the person that previously used the mail address.
This time I received a reply including the new mail address of the guy and I could finally report to him that his travel account was dangerously open...
He told me he had forgotten this one and I handed him the new password and all was good.
Re: (Score:2)
My mum keeps getting mail for a few different American women who don't carefully spell out their email addresses. Medical data, appointments, financial info etc. She just deletes it all, after failing to get them to be more careful.
How About Pictures You Didn't Take On Your iPhone? (Score:2)
I have had some odd electronic communications events over the years. An email I sent a decade ago bouncing back, or an email sent to me from long ago suddenly arriving. Those are easy to understand though, some email server along the route dredging up old logs, perhaps when a decommissioned server was rebooted.
But I got an iPhone in 2013 for the first time, and last year while going through the photos on the phone, I found pictures taken by someone else of people I did not know at locations I did not recogn
Mostly spam (Score:2)
As with my Slashdot, my email address is some variant on a word for a false name. So a lot of people use it to sign up for services which don't check that email addresses are valid.
I may or may not have reset a few passwords in retaliation.
Aaaallll the time... (Score:2)
Constantly (Score:2)
My real name is the same and my Gmail account name is very similar to another person's. To add to it, I have discovered that we were both born in the same hospital and lived in the same area as children. I no longer liver there; but he still does.
How do I know all this, because I get his email!
Re: (Score:2)
I just felt like sharing a bit more. As I said, we both have the same name and enough other data markers are the same, or close enough to cause confusion. A few key bite of data are the same, or transposed from each other; it really is a weird coincidence.
Our email addresses are different by a single dot. To make it worse, I frequently forward his mail to him; but it bounces back to my account, I hope he is getting a copy because some of it is actually important.
This left me with an Idea, I have emailed him
Recently at a bad time (Score:4, Funny)
I got an email where the dude had the same address as mine except with an extra character their system musta not handled right.
I've been cutting down on meat consumption, it's not been easy. The misdirected email was a receipt from a rib joint;
> 10 x Cajun Boneless Wings
> 1 x Louisiana Rub Full Ribs
> 1 x Hickory Smoked BBQ Full Ribs
> 3 x Ranch
> 1 x Large Seasoned Fries
Talk about a sucker punch..
Once got someone's police officer application (Score:2)
I once got a LAPD application sent to me by someone who thought I was their recruiter or whatever. I replied saying they had sent it to the wrong address, and then I deleted the email. I never heard back from the guy, but I imagine he is this moment he is holding a danish trying to stand still next the Leslie Nielsen.
Not just ANY email... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not just any emails though -- it would mostly be scans of customer passports and other ID, travel visa applications, etc. Things that should NEVER be sent by email in the first place, let alone to an external free address on hosted a different continent and ESPECIALLY NOT unencrypted..
The first bunch of times I replied with a friendly message pointing out their error, and asked to please make sure to use the right address -- but they kept sending things. The next few dozen notices I sent got progressively less friendly. No change. I briefly considered just ignoring them altogether but felt bad for their customers getting screwed over and having their vacations or other travel plans fall through.
I also send a direct emails to the main email address listed on the website of the travel office explaining the situation, to no avail. The only thing that finally stopped it was sending a nastygram to their UK parent company asking them what kind of Mickey Mouse outfit they were running by their ongoing efforts to send me their confidential customer information despite my continuous reminders not to. Although the emails stopped abruptly after that, even the parent company never acknowledged or replied to my notice. No one ever did.
So... Just keep that in mind should you ever 'need to' hand over your passport to a travel agency or have them help you with a travel visa -- no guarantee that they didn't forward it to a complete stranger using a free mail account on the other side of the planet. A less morally inclined recipient could have REALLY screwed some people over.
Re: (Score:2)
That happened to me back around 2000, and I found the only way to fix it was too email the customers. One of them told me that she went to their office to complain.
All the time (Score:2)
I got a gmail address early on that uses a unique character name from a popular movie so I get these all the time. Either someone selecting a variant of the name and mistyping it, or just using it as BS e-mail. At the moment, I'm getting the Bank of America notifications from some guys business account this is always on the verge of being overdrawn, and a group e-mail discussion about some sort of reunion. A couple of years ago I got an angry e-mail for some Swedish actress after someone using my e-mail ad
Could have been fun... (Score:2)
For several years, there was a supervisor in one of my company's main distribution centers that had the same name as me (I'm in IT). Our names showed up side by side in the company directory, so we would get each other's emails from time to time. The best one I received was from another shipping dock supervisor requesting forklift operation training for a couple of new employees. I considered showing up at the dock - I've always wanted to try to drive a forklift.
Sensitive Data (Score:2)
I used to get emails meant for a 'Mrs. HRC', but deleted them all because they appeared to be marked as Classified. Wonder what that was all about.
There are lots of me (Score:4, Funny)
There are lots of me, or at least people with the same first and last names.
I got my firstnamelastname@gmail.com address before all the other motherfuckers but that doesn't stop them forgetting they have to insert an initial, a symbol, a number or whatever.
So, I get mail for a fireman in New Zealand, a photographer in Nottingham UK, some guy in California, and a bird watcher in South Wales, a small business in unknown location in UK permanently late with its bills, an agricultural supplies salesman in Eire, and more. I get all sorts: apple product activation confirmations, hotel bookings, flight confirmations, tax demands, late payment warnings, the latest news on farm drainage.
I have tried to do the decent thing where possible and alert senders that they are discussing finance and business with the wrong person. This usually works out.
The bigger difficulty is when the person making the error is not sending to firstname but is the idiot who believes their own actual email address is firstnamelastname@gmail.com. I tried the polite way but doofus insisted on continuing to try to use my address (his actual real address has the word _info appended to the name but he is too dumb to remember). Eventually I emailed his business address book (he loves cc all) with the title "sorry to be an arse", attaching an image of a hairy arse and describing his idiocy and the fact that attempting to deal with him in a polite and helpful manner and resulted only in sour, moronic responses from him. Problem solved.
Re: (Score:2)
I tried submitting a story about Amazon not validating emails a few years ago, some little kid reg
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone thinks they want first.last@domain.com until they get every idiots mail.
Continuously (Score:2)
Apparently, I own a Hyundai purchased in San Antonio. It keeps sending me emails reminding me to change its oil. I've not been in San Antonio in 40 years.
I'm behind on my rent in London
I applied for a warehouse job in Manchester UK
I was an adult leader of a Boy Scout troop in Pennsylvania
I missed my dentist appointment in Tuscon
The HOA president in Santa Monica is VERY upset with the company that build the wall for our subdivision (3000 miles away)
One guy was trying to send an ema
obligatory (Score:2)
I have FirstinitialLastname@gmail, and wow do I get a lot of mis-addressed e-mails. Here's my canned response for those I do answer (I'm surprised nobody has posted this xkcd link yet.):
Sorry, wrong email address.
Here's a relevant comic for you (this happens a lot):
https://xkcd.com/1279/ [xkcd.com]
Hold your mouse over the picture for more info
I get tons of it. (Score:2)
Martin Espinoza is a horrendously common name. It's not quite at John Smith levels, but it's damned close. I have never been nice about it because I also get tons of deliberate mismessaging; not just spam, but someone (probably some disgruntled slashdotter who doesn't like me destroying his argument) is also deliberately signing me up for crap.
What do most of these comments have in common? (Score:2)
A: Gmail
It is high time someone holds Google accountable for their negligent practices that violate even their own Privacy Policy. Google truly is evil.
Re: (Score:2)
its not googles fault if people send shit to the wrong email address.
Re: (Score:2)
Not just gmail.
I run (most of) my own domains and servers and have since the mid-90s, and on top of the background 10,000 SPAM delivery attempts per day to my poor servers for the last decades, someone one decided to waste SPAMmers' time by creating a page full of made up user@dom.ain except without checking if some of those 'made-up' domains were in fact real. That noticeably added to the wave of rubbish for a while.
Rgds
Damon
I get dozens every day (Score:2)
I get these a lot (Score:2)
There are a couple of people sharing my name that just cannot remember their own email when booking hotels etc. Once I got an introductory email to the new job of these guys got. Took quite a bit of back and forth of "Oh, but of course you need this information" - "No, I am not the person that you hired" - "But it says so right here". Guess in the end they deserved each other.
Yup (Score:2)
I have email addresses on several very popular domains that are very, very old and use a very, very popular nickname -- no letters, no numbers, just the bare nick. I didn't know they would be so conspicuous when I signed up for them in the nineties, but so be it.
I get a lot of misdirected email. A ridiculous amount of it, actually. People often inadvertently drop letters, numbers, and other differentiators from addresses, and they end up in my in-box. Sometimes I can figure out who they're for and forward t
Yes - why aren't companies verifying addresses? (Score:2)
One person signed up for a UK telephone plan with an email address of mine (not name-based), I couldn't unsubscribe from the emails without logging into their system, which I ended up doing, and posting a few notes on their Support forum that I was able to access this person's plan and everyone should quit the service because their security is shit. (I changed the email to something like NOTATTHISEMAILADDRESS@GMAIL.COM).
Right now I'm also getting someone's British Gas account notifications. I've also recent
I get german pizza order emails. (Score:5, Funny)
I occasionally get emails about online pizza orders made by some guy in Germany who shares my last name and can't get his email right. He lives somewhere in Berlin and likes thin crust pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms.
having your own domain name helps avoid this (Score:2)
I've had my own domain name for 20(?) years now, and I (and a couple friends) are the only ones who have even used it, so I don't get any misdirected email, but...
My telephone number has apparently been inadvertently entered many times for various people. So I get calls (not robocalls) from people saying that they got a message with this number, or it was on a form somewhere. I also have a personal tollfree number (for relatives/friends around the country). For a very short time, I was getting lots of calls
Here's a VIN number, name and address (Score:2)
There's someone who seems to commonly use my email when purchasing products. She has the same first initial and last name. This has happened a bunch over the years. Often it's "We're happy you stopped in, please call us if you have any questions" type emails.
Last week I received an email with the VIN number of the new Ford she bought, along with instructions on how to install Ford Connect to locate the car and remotely lock and unlock it.
So I emailed the salesman (whose name was in the email). That email bo
I get the hem regularly (Score:2)
Yes ... (Score:2)
... I did.
When the boss's son got married, the firm had me give her an email in our domain.
I really, really, made a scene telling any and all how bad an idea that was.
Predictably, she sent out all kinds of shit, and recipients and the firm was challenged on several occasion regarding the content.
Sure enough, I sent the guy an email about a meeting and he forwarded it to her so she'd know where he's be.
She hit, "Reply to all ..." and I got the following shit:
Honey, I enjoyed last night very much but you are going to have to control yourself.
Your violence did not excite me, it scared me.
I didn't know you were like this at all.
I'm not into dom/sub and you should have asked me before you ...
Goddam.
I had to take it to him.
He finally got a fu
A doctor, and a few others (Score:2)
I got my gmail address quite early, back in the invite days from another slashdot poster, so my address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com.
There is a doctor whose gmail adress is drfirstnamelastname@gmail.com but who must forget about the initial "dr" occasionally, as do some people he works with. I have never gotten any patient related stuff but I have received a few travel, visa and medical business related emails. Also emails directed to a plumber in London, someone who left their passport in a youth hostel
Much worse! I made a boo boo (Score:2)
Not sure I should confess this one, but... In one of the early email systems I programmed, I made a little mistake in how names were handled. Had to do with a search function in the database that I was using, but no question about who messed up and I have met the enemy...
Under certain cases the email system would deliver email to the intended recipient and to someone else...
Suffice it to say that I don't want to go too far into the details. I don't think there was any serious damage, but I learned a lot abo
All the time (Score:2)
My email address is my first name @gmail.com. A coworker had a blogger.com account back when the initial beta gmail invites only went to people who had one.
I get emails intended for various people all around the world, a couple a month. I always reply back and kindly let them know they sent it to the wrong person.
I've gotten tax papers, invitations to pick up Christmas decorations, recipes, receipts, and resumes. I've probably also gotten a couple amorous letters, but those are indistinguishable from spam s
Astoundingly often (Score:2)
Astoundingly often ... like others, I got in Gmail early and got a good address.
I'm not surprised that others wish they had my address ... I'm just astounded at how many people actually seem to think they have it.
All sorts of receipts and transactional emails ... hotels, online shopping, tire places ... from around the English speaking world. Oh, and one guy actually had business cards printed up with my email address ... and apparently he is quite the player. Yikes. (Him I actually did track down ... he
All the damn time (Score:2)
I have a very common name, and I get misdirected e-mail from all over the world.
Fairly frequently, I'll reply to let the sender know that they've got the wrong e-mail address.
Once it was billing info from a phone company that had the recipient's phone number, so I texted her to let her know she'd put in the wrong e-mail address when she signed up for her phone.
Sometimes they're commercial e-mail with a valid "unsubscribe" link, so that's nice.
The most frustrating ones though, are commercial e-mail without a
Personally no, corporately yes (Score:2)
Circa 1994 I was the systems guy and embedded development guy at a startup. We registered a domain using the initials of the company name. Non-tech companies were slower to set up general Internet mail and domains. Within a few months, whenever I scanned our postmaster mailbox, I found increasing numbers of emails directed to a movie production company which had the same initials, but who registered their domain with their full company name. People were lazy or were guessing, and used the initials.
I
Same story here, Gmail, own domains, etc (Score:2)
Like a lot of you, I have had a Gmail since the invite days... InitialUncommonlastname@gmail.com. Except that uncommon last name is common in another country. I throw out most of the crap but do try to reach out on the rare occasion something looks important. I've used "recover password" and found people's home addresses. Taken a look on Google Street View. Sent them texts telling them I liked their rose bushes, etc. Asked many women with my initial to stop using my address for junk. Lots of fun with that.
I somehow wound up on a federal prison email list (Score:2)
Twice a week I get inmate headcounts, lists of inmates requesting infirmary, along with name, inmate number, social security etc.
It's a manual email list of about 20 emails of management in the "to" field, I've emailed 3 times over past 2 years but the email stops for month or 2 then begins again.
So I just made a filter to sort it all. It's hilarious getting federal prisoner private info along with guard requests, names, incident reports, etc.
Hehe
Yes, doctor's appointments (Score:2)
I thought about replying and canceling. ;) But since I had the contact information for the office I just called them and let them know. The message also included the phone number of the patient so I called her and explained the situation. We had a nice conversation.
For a while I was getting some kind of statement from what looked like a job shop in England. No contact info and of course a non-working return address.
The funniest one was one that went to a group of women in Australia arranging a girls night o
How about people using your e-mail addresses? (Score:2)
A few times I got unexpected e-mails that was related to services like Facebook, Instagram, etc. that I never signed up! It's funny that I could recover their existing accounts' passwords and logins. Wow!
fidonet point (Score:2)
Only once, when I was a fido point, with a fairly unique point number. Someone sent an email to one of the other points and mis-typed one of the digits. I got the mail, rather than the woman he was trying to talk into leaving her husband.
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... yeah, i know ALL the point numbers were unique. i was a snotty little so-and-so at the time, so mine ended in .666 .
Not so often now (Score:2)
That one had a pretty uncommon name, and I ended up tracking down a phone number via an online publishing of their (small rural) church's member directory.
ever since signing up with gmail (Score:2)
signed up with gmail in the beta, picked up firstname.middleinitial.lastname@gmail.com (obviously not the actual email address but you understand the formatting)
someone else in delaware has firstnamemiddleinitiallastname@gmail.com
another user in the UK has firsnamemiddleinitial.lastname@gmail.com
another one in california has first.namemiddleinitiallastname@gmail.com
and one more from virgnia uses firstnamemiddleinitiallast.name@gmail.com
the 5 of us have been dealing with this for years.
weve all sat i
I got a marriage proposal... meant for me (Score:2)
Got a mail not meant for me, sent by a girl to some girl friend of hers -- I'm a guy. Replied concisely and professionally. Got a laughing excuse in reply. Replied in the same vein, with reference to how the original mail tied in to my personal context. Exchanges continued for a few days, covering the fact that we lived several time zones apart, and culminating in "I really like talking with you, I have to ask, are you married?"
The Other John Perkins (Score:2)
I'm just a random, non-descript motorist, but I occasionally get email for John Perkins, author of Confessions Of An Economic Hitman. I have first/last .com. He has first/last .org.
This has happened to me twice (Score:2)
The first time was some property management company around 1,500 KM and in another country (I'm in Canada, they were in the US). I asked nicely several times to have them stop, but they didnt so i decided to be a d*ck about it. they were not very nice, and the fact they were agaisnt Canada's unsolicted email laws didnt cause them to fix this any faster. It shoudlnt have taken 2+ months to stop emailing me about the daily operatoins of a condo.
The second time is still ongoing, where i get someone's 401k u
Me too (Score:2)
I have a very common name, and firstname.lastname@gmail. I get all kinds of things. Once I got on an American elementary school teacher's parent mailing list. I got everything, including a class list with kids and parents' names, addresses and phone numbers. She was rather embarassed when I e-mailed and mentioned the mistake. Took a while for the parents to stop replying to the old list though.
I also got home security system updates for a while. Messages like "Tammy at x street has gone to bed for the
All the time! (Score:2)
Name recursion (Score:2)
Re:If you want to read others' email, buy a domain (Score:4, Interesting)
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I get banking transfer information from a bank in India. At first I thought it was a phishing scam but there was no link, the bank is legit, just someone put in the wrong email address.
Huge amounts of money being transferred too... like one of the last ones was for $18 million US.
Re: Not just one--someone's entire life (Score:2)
The main character in The Firm redirects $10M of Mafia money at the end because he's already on their hitlist anyway
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In the shop they told me numbers are recycled after three months, well the last user of this number must have been doing all his or her finances using this number because in the first week I must have had 10 calls announcing all kind of measures if I would not fix this or that.
gmail's fault (Score:2)
signed up for GMail back in 2004 and got her firstname.lastname@gmail.com
Interestingly, every single report of this problem in comments to this article comes from GMail users, typically also with initial.lastname@gmail.com or firstname.lastname@gmail.com address.
Looks like an obvious namespacing problem: instead of cramming a billion people into @gmail.com, why wouldn't they split it into a large number of domains? With or without Google's cooperation -- for the former, Google can stop digging the hole and redirect new signups to spaces elsewhere; for the latter, people can do
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I have first name.lastname at Gmail and firstname at outlook.com. I get so much crap: confirmation from site account creations, photos from some happy Germans having dinner, union and doctors newsletters from Denmark, student homework portals, invoices for bush clearing in South Africa and a fertilizer agreement for a farmer in Denmark.
A guy signed up for broadband internet, got invoices, then late payment notices and termination notices. Finally signup from different provider. All his personal details were
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My email is {first initial}{last name}@gmail.com. Got in nice and early.
I regret all of the things. The amount of people who mistakenly use my email is insane. And I have no way of contacting them to ask them to stop. Like how the fuck am I supposed to just google someone's real email address?
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You don't own it. You use it though the generosity (?) of Google. They could shut it down at any time.
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Re:ALL THE TIME (Score:5, Funny)
I have a similar gmail account name, I got in earrly and got a good one, and I've not only received some juicy emails intended for other "me's", I've been threatened with legal action for receiving them. One guy has also demanded I turn over my account to him, as he is entitled to it, and threatened to sue me if I didn't. Haven't heard anything about that one in a few years.
The most annoying part are the companies who get your address added as a point of contact for something and never accept it was never intended to be you. I got so pissed off with one of my alter egos who refused to fix his mistake, even blaming me for receiving the emails and threatening me, that I cancelled his business broadband...
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Same. I didn’t realise it was such a common problem.
The only juicy thing that arrived was the internal accounts fora company that same name was taking over as CEO. That led to some fun exchanges with lawyers.
I regularly get emails about another same.name’s golfing dates. After dozens of requests for them to stop I just started sending snarky responses instead. It kind of backfired as instead of inviting him less they now think he is “lit” and want to hang out all the time.
It does get
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I have (my) firstname.lastname@gmail.com. I've never run across anyone else with the same name as me in person
Well, I've got two of those in my extended family, and there are at least ten of them in the city I live in
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You're not alone.
I've also had a gmail account since it was invitation only. I also get emails intended for others.
I've developed an approach which is a copy & paste boilerplate reply
"This has come to the wrong address. Please check and resend so my namesake does not miss out. To protect your confidentiality, I will delete this e-mail and future ones of a similar nature. Thank you"
I might add the "you do NOT have my permission to retain or process this e-mail address" words to my boilerplate text -- i