Someone thinks my Gmail email address is theirs, and it’s been happening for about 5 years now. They’ve signed us up for Facebook, Pinterest, and many other things. I just log in and change the password when I get a signup to a new account. I’ve had the Gmail email since 2004, and I’m not giving it up.
The tag only goes back to 2014, but behold the 6 year (and counting) saga of Idiot Bill Bickel.
Thanks for that link, Kamino Neko; that seems to be a great blog!
I’ve had exactly the same maddeningly Kafkaesque experience. Tell them that they’ve got the wrong email address, and the next question is usually, “What’s your phone number?” or “What are the last four digits of your Social Security number?” The conversation becomes the verbal equivalent of a Moebius strip as they keep asking you to prove you’re that person, while you’re trying to explain that you’re not that person. Communicating with aliens couldn’t be this difficult.
I got a bunch of Hawaiian Airlines confirmations for someone whose middle initial + surname was the same as my surname. I.e. I am [FirstName][LastName]@gmail.com while he is [FirstName][L][Astname]@gmail.com, or at least tells people he is.
I had no way to contact the guy directly, but I tried to sort it out with Hawaiian Airlines so I at least wouldn’t get his itineraries spammed to me, but they were just not getting it. (Choice line from HA customer support: “Are you sure you don’t just both have the same email address”?).
Eventually I just logged in to his account and tool my email address off it. I could have cancelled all of the fights he had booked, but that would be excessively mean.
There’s someone with the same first and last name as me, but a different middle initial, which happens to be the same as our surname initial. So whereas my addy is FirstnameLastname@gmail, hers is FirstnameLastinitiallLastname@gmail. Unsurprisingly a lot of people overlook the double initial and I get a lot of her email.
What’s more annoying is she seems to forget it herself when signing up to new websites and mailing lists, so I get signed up to them. And even worse, she’s a Tea Partier :mad:
I can’t imagine why anyone would base their email name on their actual name.
A host of problems much worse than the OP’s ensue.
As a Computer Science prof back in the late 70s I knew better than to do this.
My primary email addy is not based on my name, but I still get loads of emails intended for others. My address is something like [Hobby]@[provider].com. I set up my account early so I got the original. There are now many [Hobby#]@[provider].com variants out there.
The most prolific seems to be a Patricia who lives in Florida and seems to really like the Republican party. I get loads of fundraising emails from all over the States asking for money for various Republican candidates. Requests to the candidates or state party doesn’t seem to slow them down.
I have someone convinced that his email address is mine and he gives it out regularly. I get his bank statements. I have his social security number. I had a nice conversation with his tax accountant recently via email. About a year ago, he got his car loan. I suspect he is an older guy, because I don’t get anything other than that sort of business stuff.
My first hotmail account was <firstname_lastname>@hotmail and I’d get emails for <firstnamelastname> or <firstname-lastname> - one was a woman in Australia who apparently was about to or just had a baby, so I got lots of baby-related sales pitches. There were a couple that seemed personal and perhaps important, so I’d reply that they’d reached the wrong person. I have since abandoned that account.
Now, I just use my username at hotmail and yahoo, so I just get generic spam. For my more official emails, I have <firstinitiallastname>@ engineer and I’ve never gotten anything destined for anyone else. Then again, engineer.com isn’t a common email address.
Could you give me an example of these problems? My email has been my name since I first had email and I have never had a problem. I never get email not intended for me, either, but my last name is very uncommon, so maybe that is why. But if I am risking a host of problems I would love to know what they are.
Uh, I think things have changed a wee bit have changed in the last forty years or so. :dubious:
In my experience, it’s standard in the business world to use real names/initials in personal emails used for professional purposes, such as when submitting a resume. Often numbers are added for obvious reasons.
For example, my email is equivalent to ELastname12@ gmail. com. What would you suggest I use instead? Something like Green_Bean@ gmail. com would be really unprofessional. I haven’t seen an overly sexy personal email in a long time, but when I see something like devilsfan123@ gmail .com, I have to wonder why they didn’t make an account with a more professional-sounding address for job hunting purposes.
Could you give us an example of a non-real name email address that would be professionally appropriate?
This happens to me all the time, as well. And sometimes the person doesn’t have the same name as me—but uses a very similar email address.
Let’s say mine is “john.smith” at gmail. This person is using johnsmith at gmail. The period is missing.
For the longest time I was getting phone bills and the subsequent payments received emails from AT&& for some guy in Texas. After a while I called AT&T and them told them it was the wrong email address for this guy and to please remove my email address. They said they couldn’t—that the person in question had to. Since I had no way to get a hold of him, I simply created a few filters in Gmail and had all AT&T emails get trashed automatically.
I’ve been on CC lists for politicians in New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and others. I have to ask to be removed.
Right now, I’m getting emails from a BWM dealer in Kansas that confirms my service appointments, even though I live in New York state and don’t have a BMW. And now I’m on their mailing list.
I get sign-up emails where I have to confirm, which I don’t do. Everything from xBox, to Ticketmaster, to you name it.
I think I’ve created over a hundred filters in Gmail.
For several years I was getting phone calls from bill collectors for someone with the same name as me (but a different middle initial). I guess the guy went to the university here years and years ago, so they just figured it was me. Finally convinced them it wasn’t me, especially since that guy was black and I’m white.
@ftg: I’m also curious as to why people shouldn’t use email addresses with their name in it. I do because I use that email address for work-related things, as well as for my private emails. I do have several other email accounts not related to my name, though, which I use for other things. And probably a half-dozen, for which I use them for scambaiting.
I’ve even received summonses in the mail to appear in court. Once time, it was in New York City (which I’ve never been to). Apparently there was a car accident and a person with my name was a witness. So I called and explained I’ve never even been in NYC and they said they would take care of it. And I asked them, “Did you send these out to everyone with this name in hopes of finding the witness?” And they said yes, for everyone with that name in a 500 mile radius.
Remember before cellphones, when pagers were a thing?
I decided I wanted to use a pager for business purposes. A friend had a paging company, so the pager and service were close to free. I decided to splurge on an 800 number, and had it added to business cards, advertising, etc.
I expected to get a maximum of two or three pages a week, which was great, because usually I’d have to hunt down a pay phone to retrieve my message. Well, I got ten calls the first day, all for the dude who had the number prior to me. Without calling to retrieve the message I couldn’t tell if the page was for me or not. It sucked.
So, I called one of the people back and explained what was going on. He had an alternate landline phone number for the guy. I called him and he was furious that I had taken his number. I explained it wasn’t my choice, and that it was now mine as far as I was concerned. He screamed, threatened, screamed some more.
The next few pages I got were for him. I called each person and told them to go to hell/take their business elsewhere/drop dead/etc. By the next day there were no more calls.
Our fax number at work is a slight variation of an insurance companies fax (such as ours is 556-1234 and there’s is 566-1234). We routinely get sensitive documents faxed to us by their clients with bank and policy numbers, health reports, SSN, you name it.
I take them and fax the top sheet to the insurance company telling them to contact their client and with a promise to shred what we get. Once I even called the company because the wrong fax number was written by one of their people.
Three years later it’s finally stopped.
Email- I once received a very sensitive email with bank routing and account numbers from the parent of a friend of my child’s. Apparent my first name is the same as her sisters and my contact info popped up. I emailed her back to let her know and promised to delete everything.
She said ok, but not even thanks!
Every high tech company I’ve ever known uses real names for their emails. Perhaps ftg should inform Apple to stop using that format.
^^Sweet!
And the guy was an idiot for being mad at you. If he cared enough about the number he would have kept it. Either he didn’t pay the bill or he let the number lapse.
My job required me to get a pager in the late 90s. It was near the end of the year during the Holidays. I got tons of pages for a guy named Manny. I kept telling people that it wasn’t his number anymore. Finally I got a page from Manny. He was frantic. He was a wine distributor and was missing important calls during the busiest time of the year. He had forgotten to pay the bill or something so I had every right to the number but he was totally nice a apologetic so of course I let him have it back and got a new one.
I only have one idiot who uses my email address, but she is certainly persistent. I get multiple confirmation requests a month for everything from Instagram to LinkedIn to Twitter. I know her address, her full name, that her son is in medical school, and that she used to work in employee relocation services.