Duplicated email addresses?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Is it possible that two people might have the same email address? Because it seems that there is indeed someone with mine....firstname.lastname@gmail.com

I’ve had regular newsletters from a private school in the US, Amex c/c statements, notification that my subscription to a Hot Rod magazine had lapsed, and just today Verizon has forwarded to me some info about my new iPhone plan.

I’ve previously contacted all the organisations (except today’s) about the mix up, but still the Amex statements arrive app weekly.

Is it just a mistake on the part of the addresser…perhaps forgetting to add.....firstname.lastname1@gmail.com or whatever, or is there a chance that there are two of me?

2

It’s not possible for two identical gmail addresses to be registered by two different people, but something close to a duplicate will result in the same kind of confusion.

For example, if your address is JohnHancock@gmail.com, there might be a JonHancock or a JohnHandcock - and these are close enough to cause confusion and mixups.

3

Nope, not possible.

People being too stupid to enter their correct email address is entirely too possible.

4

I suppose there are ways an email address could be issued in duplicate within a privately-managed domain - two corporate email servers not perfectly synched, for example - but it would be rare. I’d say the chances of a commercial email system allowing a duplicated name to be near zero. At most, there might be a ghost account that caused weirdness, but not two active accounts.

Since the OP is from Australia, though, could it be a .au vs .com mixup of some kind? Or some other TLD issue?

5

According to Google, it isn’t possible. I’m still not convinced.

I’ve had a family googlemail.com address for many years, which has a punctuation mark in it. The punctuation mark does not need to be in there, you can remove it and still get your emails (I have tested this). A few years ago, Google told us that we could migrate to gmail.com (googlemail.com was a placeholder in the UK due to GMail already being a local trademark). Now, we can get email sent to either googlemail.com or gmail.com.

However, since that change we have started getting someone elses email (a gmail.com address). It only happens sporadically, though, and I cannot figure out just how people are getting the address wrong to allow us to get the email. We have never been able to communicate directly to see how the problem has arisen. But I suspect something as a result of the migration/merge of googlemail/gmail. I just can’t prove it yet.

6

My main personal e-mail is firstinitiallastname@domain.com. It’s a common enough name, and I get a decent amount of mail for other people with similar names. I assume it’s because the other people have a slightly modified form of the address, and the modification gets lost somewhere along the way.

7

You aren’t the only person with this problem.

In addition to typos, there are people out there who just don’t understand how email works, and that their.name at populardomain.com isn’t theirs by right.

8

Any domains I’ve administered don’t let you have duplicate names, and I’m sure the bigger ones really don’t.
However, my wife who uses my first public email address gets wrong mail all the time. I got it so far back that it is my not uncommon last name say voyager@sdmm.com Any one writing to John Voyager and using john voyager@sdmb.com will have his email winding up here. People do this repeatedly.

9

Thanks for the replies folks.

Funnily enough, all the orgs I have contacted have been apologetic and have immediately stopped any emails coming through…all except American Express!

AmEx have been bloody difficult. Firstly, it’s tough to find a **phone number ** on their website to contact them, and when you do, they want your account details verified before they put you through to an operator. :smack:

So when I have finally gotten through to a real person, they don’t seem to comprehend the problem.

Me: “Hi, I’m getting CC account statements (for a corporate card) and I think you have the wrong email contact address”.

AmEx: “OK, so what corporation do you represent?”

Me: “I’m not a rep for a corp, I’m just a private citizen, and YOU HAVE THE WRONG CONTACT DETAILS”.

AmEx: “OK, so what company do you work for then?”

Me: “I don’t work for any company that gives me a corporate CC that’s for sure, and YOU HAVE THE WRONG CONTACT DETAILS, please FIX THE PROBLEM”.

AmEx: “I don’t understand the problem”.

Me: [sighs] "You keep sending a/c updates and statements to my email address and I do not have an AmEx cc, corporate or otherwise. YOU HAVE THE WRONG EMAIL ADDRESS FOR THAT CC ACCOUNT. "

AmEx: “OK, can you send me a screenshot of your last email from us?”

Me: “Yep, that I can do”.

That was over a month ago, and I’m still getting shit every few days in my inbox from them.

:smack:

10

What this demonstrates is that snagging a coveted “firstnamelastname” email address isn’t quite as awesome as it first appears.

I’ve managed to do this twice (once when Hotmail added the live.com domain, and again when Yahoo had the dormant username lottery last year). In both cases, I eventually pulled the plug on the dream address because I was being inundated with other people’s mail.

What amazed me is that when I politely responded to some of these misdirected emails to say, “you’ve got the wrong person,” the responses were either (a) utter indifference or (b) silence. Nobody seemed to give the slightest trace of a shit that they had just sent sensitive personal and financial information to the wrong steveroo.

11

If you use Gmail, then period don’t matter. so BobASmith@ gmail is the same as Bob.A.Smith@ gmail.

Yet some fucker signed up at cozi.com with the.lurking.horror@ gmail when mine has no dots normally (not my real email remotely). So now I get emails about little Britnee’s fucking upcoming dance recital. I do the kill account thing and it doesn’t do shit. I have to block it as spam and still some get through. The thing is, don’t most websites require you to click on a link in email to register?

I also got some women’s group emailing Sharon or whatever. I wonder if she was wondering where they were going.

I am in the US and had to replace Gmail with Googlemail when adding the account to my tablet’s email program, for some reason.

12

I’ve seen this mentioned before, referring to gmail in particular – that dots in the name are ignored. I’ve received e-mail to my gmail address with and without dots in the addressee name.

[noparse]WTF? If somebody already has the name, say, TheLurkingHorror@gmail.com and then someone tries to sign up as The.Lurking.Horror@gmail.com, will it tell you that the name is already taken? Or will it allow the sign-up but then route all of his mail to the other guy?[/noparse]

13

Why bother? Email is not a certified/reliable form of communication and glitches happen all the time. Just send it to spam and filter them out.

14

Too lazy to try right now, but it’s not supposed to let you. Understand this here is cozi.com’s fault. They let someone sign up with periods, and won’t let me quit. I don’t know if it’s because the person is reactivating or what but they hide a lot of their options.

15

So I bothered. Sue me.

16

Over the years I’ve watched eight-figure deals on container ships pass through my inbox, possibly to collapse because the guy in question failed to respond to any emails about them.

I chose a silly Gmail address when I first signed up. It appears some dude in Singapore actually has that ‘silly’ name. I don’t know what his real email address is.

At first I used to respond saying “you’ve got the wrong email address” but never received any response from the sender and the emails just kept coming, so now I marvel over how much this must be fucking the guy’s career up, before hitting ‘delete’.

I also once received some teenager’s English homework, destined for her brother. I critiqued it, corrected all the spelling and grammatical errors, and sent it back to her - did I receive a word of thanks? :wink:

17

I regularly used to get emails about community stuff in Edmonton Canada, mostly about kids ice hockey -Peewee goalies sessions mostly. Holiday stuff was big too, they seem to be a very spirited group of mothers. Haven’t had any for a while now so I guess my replies stating that I was the wrong recipient eventually got some action. I used to get stuff about the Seawolves, US navy helicopter pilots during the Vietnam war. I kept telling them I wasn’t the guy they wanted but the stuff kept coming. Eventually I worked out who my namesake was and tracked him down. Turned out he was a distinguished pilot, and I contacted him. He sorted it out.

One time I received an SMS telling me to urgently come in for an appointment that had become available at the fertility clinic. Since, at the the time, I was a 50 year old male, I realized it wasn’t for me. I messaged back immediately to tell them of their error. Later in the day I received thank you messages from the clinic and the woman who had been waiting months for an appointment.

18

That won’t confuse a computer, that’ll confuse a person. We’ve had several threads on here about people getting other people’s emails for exactly that reason.

19

I use an email like jsmith@gmail.com and get mail for other J. Smiths all the time. One is a stuntwoman that is currently in the SE USA, one lives in the UK, and one lives in Australia. I’ve corresponded with the one from Australia, he has a similar address like jlsmith@gmail.com but often forgets to type it correctly, or perhaps other people mistype his e-mail address if they’re adding him to a list.

20

I have a JohnMiller @ gmail.com address. I frequently get John Millar’s email, and he gets mine. We’ve developed a solid partnership over the years, and will forward each other’s mail to each other. Last year, we each started getting JohnAMiller’s email, and we tracked him down.

I was also getting JohnMiller1’s email for years, and could never find him. I finally found him last year, because of some identifying info (he’s a parachute instructor). Someone had an urgent question about a backup chute, so I found his group’s group email and found him. I thought that was a pretty good reason to email his group - they were all very appreciative.

And then several months ago, a person I now refer to as “Jackass John Miller” has decided to start using my email address to sign up for stuff. I know his phone number, his address, his chinese delivery preferences, etc. I hate him. I’ll probably send him a snail mail pretty soon if it keeps up. Speaking of which, if there are any Mac users that would like the keys to the latest MacHeist bundle, PM me, and they’re all yours.