Do other people get bombarded with emails for people with similar names?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Bear with me a moment while I set this up.

I have a gmail address, and it’s (first initial)(last name)@gmail.com. If my name really was Rufus T. Firefly, my gmail address would be rfirefly@gmail.com.

Using the pretense that my email address really is rfirefly@gmail.com, here’s what I’ve gotten in the past couple of weeks:

February 10: I get a classmates.com email for Richard Firefly, New Hyde Park Memorial High School Class of 1969.
February 12: I get an email from Dropbox in a French-speaking country (“Bonjour Firefly, Pour finaliser votre inscription, nous n’avons plus qu’à valider l’adresse e-mail de votre compte.”)
February 16: I get an email for Rebecca Firefly, whose Wave account is >60 days past due in the amount of $97.75, and faces having her Wave services disconnected.
February 18: no name given, but their balloon order is ready for pickup at the Party City in Monaca, PA.
February 24: Ronald Firefly received a replacement for a product he’d ordered, and the seller would like feedback.
February 24: Rhonda Firefly has an appointment at Heatherfield on 02/24/2017 12:00 PM Eastern Time.
Today: Another balloon order ready for pickup at Party City in Monaca, PA.

Altogether, in the past few years, I’ve received email from over two dozen people with my last name and first initial. I’ve received apartment leases, credit card information, detailed job interview itineraries, hotel and rental car and moving truck reservations, information about conferences they’re attending. For some, I get a single email, and never hear about them again, and some have become regulars: Ruth Firefly signed up to attend the National Fire Protection Association conventions in both 2015 and 2016, for instance, and I have the emails to prove it. :slight_smile:

When I talk about this with other people in meatspace, I get quizzical looks - as best as I can tell, this doesn’t happen to many people. And given that I’ve got a very uncommon last name, at times it seems like I must be getting emails for half the people in the country with my last name and first initial. (Plus a few overseas. But they’re mostly domestic.)

So, I thought I’d ask my fellow Dopers: is anything like this happening to any of you? Or is what I’m experiencing something genuinely unusual?

2

This has never happened to me with gmail.

Years ago I got a letter from a man with the same name as me. He was interested in creating an organization of people with that name for some purpose I could not discern, though I did not get through the entire long, rambling and somwhat disturbing letter. I did not respond and thankfully never heard from him again.

My advice to the OP is to pick up his order at Party City and enjoy the balloons. :slight_smile:

3

A good idea, especially since the balloons have been pre-paid for by credit card. (OK, maybe not such a good idea, as that could get me into trouble with the law. :eek:) But the fact that I’m in southern Maryland, and Monaca is on the other side of Pittsburgh (roughly 5 hours away, according to Google Maps), puts a slight crimp in that plan. :slight_smile:

4

I should add that none of these people has ever emailed me; I just get email intended for them. And it’s not like I can email them; the only address I have for them is MINE.

I’ve gotten snailmail addresses for a few of them, and I think I got a phone number once or twice. But I was too lazy to send any of them a letter, and the idea of calling one of them just felt weird.

5

This happens to me, too.

6

I did, and it persisted for a couple of years.

When I was on active duty, I had an email of (myfirstname).(mylastname)@blah blah.(branch).mil. Around 2009, I started getting emails addressed to an Airman First Class MyFirstName MyLastName for medical appointments. Now, I was a Major at the time, and figured it a simple typo from someone at a different base. I forwarded it to the sender, and told them that I would not make the appointment on that Thursday, since, I was not in Germany (I was in Utah), and I could not arrange a flight that quickly. The sender was apologetic, and I never heard back. I did a little digging through our email lists, and found that there was an individual with the same first & last name as myself, and the same middle initial out there. T’was strange. Apparently this doppelganger of mine had an email address of (myfirstname).(mylastname).2@blah blah.(branch).mil, and it was close enough for others to get mixed up.

Fast forward a few months, and I started getting leave request approvals for the aforementioned A1C. They were automated messages, so I deleted them. This happened sporadically over the years, until about 2014, when I was stationed in Albuquerque. Now I started getting leave requests for others, with now “Staff Sergeant” MyFirstName and MyLastName as the supervisor and approver. I started deleting them, and took to emailing this SSgt that he needs to have his underlings use the correct address. After two weeks of six or seven mis-guided requests and no answer from the SSgt, I simply deleted them. Then some Lieutenant calls me up from Arizona asking for the SSgt–he wanted to know why “I” wasn’t checking off on the vacation requests. I informed him that this was a different individual and he called the wrong dude. “Lieutenant, I need you to pull the Staff Sergeant aside and have him correct his people and their processes. I have no interest in knowing or approving Airman Joe Bag O’Donuts trip to Waubesha, MN.” The LT was apologetic, and told me he would.

I continued to get sporadic leave requests, especially around that Christmas season. After three or four misguided requests, I called up the SSgt directly, introduced myself by first and last name only, (apparently he was in a hangar doing work), and informed him that his folks’ vacation requests were going to be delayed because I wasn’t going to approve them. The SSgt seemed to be bothered by this, and implied that I should change my email address. I responded to the youngster that had been using the same email address for the past fourteen years, and that he needed to correct his folks. A little grumbling, but he somewhat agreed and that was it.

Apparently no action was taken. So I continued to delete the incoming vacation requests (and some other personnel action approvals) all the way up until my retirement in 2015. I think I quit caring somewhere in the spring of 2015, but my notes are a little sketchy.

Tripler
I may share a name, but I alone retain the smarts, good looks and charisma.

7

I get it ALL the time and I love it. I’ve gotten so many cool things. Mostly it’s mundane things like newsletters and such. But I’ve gotten bank statements, tax returns, a video of the guy being arrested sent from his lawyer. I also once got the log in to a site one person was making for their home business. So I logged on and changed it so it was a full screen playing of the badger song. But I got the best gift yesterday. The login for a premium membership for pornhub live lol I’ve got a $250 limit to use to my hearts content apparently! Though…tbh I’m too shy to view live webcams.

8

There’s another guy at my work that has my same name (both first and last).
We are constantly getting each other’s email.

But I’ve never had that issue with my personal email.

9

Yes, it’s happened to me. I wouldn’t use the word “bombarded,” but it’s an occasional nuisance.

For years I got mail for a guy in England with the same name (my email is “firstnamelastname” and his is “firstname-lastname”). He was apparently exacerbating the problem by forgetting the hyphen when he gave people his address. I would reply to the emails and tell the senders they had the wrong person. Eventually he got wind of this and contacted me to apologize; after that it dropped off quite a bit. (There’s a relevant xkcd comic about people who think your email address ought to be theirs.)

There’s also another guy with my name who takes expensive vacations at a “golf resort” in Florida; several times a year I’d get his reservation confirmations. I repeatedly emailed the resort to tell them they had the wrong person, but was ignored. I finally gave up and blocked the domain. A few months ago I got another reservation confirmation for a vacation home in the Rocky Mountains, including a code for opening the garage door; I briefly considered taking advantage of that myself.

10

This has happened to me a number of times. My Gmail address is [first initial][middle initial][last name]@gmail.com, and at least two different people who have similar names have used it by accident over the years. In one case it was someone who’d signed up for some sort of financial service and I called the service and got it straightened out – someone had entered the wrong middle initial in their system.

The other case has been going on for about six years now and I’m really getting sick of it. The person with my same initials and last name is a man living in the UK (I’m in the US), although it seems to be his wife who can’t remember what his actual email address is when she’s using it to order or sign up for things online. Every few months or so I get confirmation emails and electronic receipts intended for them, and occasionally emails about things like church socials. I will often reply to say “You’ve got the wrong person, and please tell your customer to stop using this address”, but while this has kept my from getting repeated emails from the same businesses it doesn’t seem to have done anything to stop this dope from using the wrong address.

Yes, exactly. Since I have received receipts for things that were supposed to be delivered to the house I actually do know this family’s street address, but since they’re in another country I’d have to go to the post office to pay for international postage if I wanted to contact them.

11

I have a similar problem, where my email is firstname.lastname@gmail.com and I am constantly getting stuffed misaddressed to me. Sometimes it’s because poorly configured email servers don’t recognize the period in the name. Sometimes it’s just typos. I have received both legal and medical info attached for other people. I try to contact the sender if the email looks important but simply bin anything normal looking.

I’m going to set up a new email soon, when I get sufficiently motivated. I’m going to pick something that isn’t an actual name.

12

My email address looks like channingbanks@gmail.com but I get email for people with only the last name, like johnbanks@gmail.com. This does not make sense.

13

I’ll see if I can dig up the reference later, but when I did some research on this, Google said that gmail doesn’t recognize the periods, and treats rfirefly@gmail.com, r.firefly@gmail.com., and r.fire.fly@gmail.com as the same address. (I tested this out by sending to variants on my gmail address from my Yahoo mail address, which I hardly ever use anymore because Yahoo is horrible these days, and it seemed to be the case: I could put periods anywhere in the part of my address before the @ and they would be ignored; I’d get the emails at my gmail address.)

Apparently workplaces that use gmail addresses as their work addresses can configure their servers to recognize the periods, and use them to differentiate among internal emails. But once they go out into the wider world, Google says periods don’t make a difference, and it seems to be so.

14

You are correct that gmail ignores periods.

My e-mail addresses tend to be [firstname][lastname]@[mailcompany].com, and I’ve received the following e-mails incorrectly:

  1. A student asking for an extension on her paper. There’s a Canadian professor with my name at hotmail.ca. I let her know she had the address wrong.
  2. A rejection letter for a job I didn’t apply for. Poor guy.
  3. Various jokes. When I said they were funny but the sender was including me in error (same last name), the response was, hey, just because our parents are fighting doesn’t mean we have to fight, too. That’s when the “can’t prove a negative” really hit home. It would have been easy for me to prove I was the sender’s brother, but impossible to prove I’m not.
  4. Many different phone bills, satellite TV bills, OnStar bills, delivery notices, etc. I try to straighten those out, but I usually fail. I really like it when the service provider asks me for more information when the first thing I tell them is that they have my email address in error so of course I don’t know the street address, etc.
  5. Someone was trying to send money to his son in prison and I was getting notified. So, I tracked him down and argued with the guy that he’s using the wrong address. Very similar to the XKCD comic, since I was able to call him with the number on the e-mails I was getting.
  6. Information about a real estate purchase in Europe. Me: you have my address in error. Wife on the cc list: No, they don’t. Don’t listen to him, my husband is confused.
  7. Multiple dating services. I usually just log into those and deactivate the account.
  8. A facebook confirmation. I deactivated that one, too, so I would stop getting friend requests from strangers.
  9. Business contracts, including client information and even scanned driver’s licenses :eek:.

After a while, I sometimes know who they mean and just forward the e-mail along to the right address (my name with an initial in the middle).

It’s sometimes fun to try and figure out who they are trying to contact. If I can set the service provider straight or contact the actual recipient, I try and do that. If not, I just let the sender know they have the wrong address.

RS

15

Wow, I’m really not the only one! While you’re getting different stuff than I am, the sheer breadth and diversity sounds very much like what I’m getting.

you’re my new hero. :slight_smile: Too bad you couldn’t have changed it so that it was playing theflash animation, though, because unlike the YouTube, flash goes on forever. :smiley:

Lucky you! :p:p:p

How the $#@! did I miss this one?

There really IS an xkcd for everything. Kinda like a less risque version of Rule 34.

I think that if I was just getting a lot of email for two or three people, I’d do my best to track them down and let them know the sort of info about them that they were providing me through their carelessness. It would certainly be worth an international snailmail.

In my case, though, it’s dozens of people, so there’s no way to really cut into the flow. I haven’t been particularly perturbed about it, other than the creeping sense that I was the only one this was happening to. (I feel better about that now that I know this isn’t so!)

So I think I’m gonna go with AngelSoft’s approach, and just roll with it. :slight_smile:

16

No see I DID. I embedded it onto the front page, full screen. Looped it and changed the password to the website. And since their contact email was MINE they couldn’t retrieve their password. It was awesome. If you’re too dumb to remember your email address you’re too dumb for a home business. I was really just helping them out.

17

OK, you really ARE my new hero then!

18

Ive been lucky so far. No dopplengers.

My employer created usernames with first and middle initials, last name.

rmsmith jtjackson

They are also email names.

Pretty strange to realize I’ve had that email account since 1988. Started on a Vax email server. It’s been migrated many times to various servers. They switched to Gmail accounts 10 years ago.

19

Regarding periods–we do not have gmail, and with our provider, it’s all about the dots.

Our personal email address, left over from the time when it was standard to have one per family, is (my first initial) (my wife’s first initial) . (our last name) at provider.com.

The dot is very important, as there is a woman in California whose email address is (her first initial)(her middle initial) (her last name) at provider.com.

Our last name is the same as hers (not an especially common name, but we are not related), and her two initials match our first initials. So the only thing distinguishing our addresses is the dot.

We have gotten several emails for her, including a real estate prospectus regarding a property she wished to buy. She has gotten more emails for us. Easier to leave out a dot than to include an extra, I guess.

The first instance of confusion, and the best, and I may have told this story here before, was when my uncle, who has a different last name from us–we will call him Ted Lastname for purposes of clarity–moved from the Midwest to California. He sent out a group email to various family and friends describing his journey west. He meant to include us, but he left off the dot. A few days later he received a response that went something like this:

“Dear Ted – I was surprised to hear from you, as I have not been in touch with the Lastname family in many a year. In fact, I think it was probably 1970 or so when we moved out of Contra Costa County, leaving behind the Lastnames and all of our other friends. But after much cogitation I believe I have figured out exactly who you are–you were Moe Lastname’s youngest, were you not? Regardless, thank you so much for digging up my email address and thinking of me, and welcome to California.”

It would have been especially amusing had it turned out that my uncle actually WAS Moe Lastname’s youngest, but alas, he was not.

20

I can’t believe I almost forgot this, but the best misdirected email I ever got was about two years ago – an invitation to join the Nightly Show softball team for their first game, against the Daily Show team. It had a map to the park where they were playing and everything. There was apparently a crew member with my last name and similar initials, and the person who forwarded the message to me (a graphic artist, according to the IMDb) must have mistyped his email address on her phone.

I let her know she got the wrong person, but had I not lived hundreds and hundreds of miles away I totally would have shown up for the game.