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Who here gets other people's email?

eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
30,444
30,232
Just got one! :D

My last name is uncommon, but not so rare that other people across the US don't share it. In fact, more than one person actually shares my first and last name spelled the same way.

But one particular older person who shares only the same first initial as I do has caused some issues more than once.

Since his first initial and last name are the same as mine I tend to end up with his email, despite that address having been mine since 1999.

The first time was when he tried to sign up for Netflix. I kept getting registration emails from them. They finally left me alone when I told them that my email wasn't his.

The second time around was a little more involved. He signed up for Comcast. How do I know that? Because Comcast was sending all their email about his installation appointments and pre-billing information to ME.

I ended up with his home address and phone number. So I called and got his wife and explained to her that Comcast was using my email. I don't know what happened after that but apparently he didn't take care of it because I had to actually get on reddit and contact their support there to get my email address removed.

Just now I got an email from a realtor in his area!

In the meantime, over the years there's been a guy in the northwest who works for a brewing company. Again, same first and last name. Periodically, I get vendor orders from people looking for him. One summer, all his friends decided to include my email address in their plans for a trip to Las Vegas. I kept responding that I was not him but the emails kept coming.

All that changed when I did a reply all to the last email to let them all know that they had emailed a complete stranger the address and front door code to where they were all going to be.

Suddenly all the emails stopped! :D

Anyone else had similar experiences?
 
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That's pretty wild. I'd like to think that after the first instance of the mix up he'd have taken care of it and ensured he provided the right address int he future or even changed it to something different.

Did you ever have email conversations with him about it?
 
SandboxGeneral said:
That's pretty wild. I'd like to think that after the first instance of the mix up he'd have taken care of it and ensured he provided the right address int he future or even changed it to something different.

Did you ever have email conversations with him about it?
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It's bizarre actually. And you're right, you'd think he would have taken care of it. But I discovered during the second incident that he and his wife are in their late 70s, early 80s. So somewhere along the line the ball is getting dropped when a business asks for his email.

I've never conversed with him directly simply because I do not have his real email. He certainly has mine though.

What's funny about the other guy is that he finally accepted my LinkedIn invite. He's my age though so that was pretty much taken care of at some point.
 
I had someone with the same last name as me, same first name but in the female form. My address was FirstInitialLastName@........com - It started slow at first so I ignored it, but then the emails became much more frequent as people started using that email address more often. Pictures of family events, school events, even official school registration emails, registration emails for accounts for various services, etc...

I made several attempts to let people know who emailed the address that this was my address and not the person they were trying to communicate to. Did absolutely nothing to stem the tide of emails.

Finally, a realtor sent over information about the house this person was trying to buy. So I contacted the realtor and asked them if they could inform this person that they were using the wrong email address and I was getting them. The realtor said they would let the person know.

Boom - instantly, everything stopped. Never heard another word. But it went on for about a year. :/ -- made sure to delete all the emails as there was a lot of personal information involved.
 
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I get other people's email regularly. Have for years. I don't blame the intended recipient, rather the senders, who probably weren't paying decent attention when given the email to start with. Mine is a custom domain that I've owned for probably twenty years.
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SandboxGeneral said:
That makes a little more sense as they're not as likely to be very tech savvy at that age
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Too young? Hehehe!!
 
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BigMcGuire said:
I had someone with the same last name as me, same first name but in the female form. It started slow at first so I ignored it, but then the emails became much more frequent as people started using that email address more often. Pictures of family events, school events, even official school registration emails, registration emails for accounts for various services, etc...

I made several attempts to let people know who emailed the address that this was my address and not the person they were trying to communicate to. Did absolutely nothing to stem the tide of emails.

Finally, a realtor sent over information about the house this person was trying to buy. So I contacted the realtor and asked them if they could inform this person that they were using the wrong email address and I was getting them. The realtor said they would let the person know.

Boom - instantly, everything stopped. Never heard another word. But it went on for about a year. :/ -- made sure to delete all the emails as there was a lot of personal information involved.
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Having just bought a house, I can certainly understand all the personal details involved and thus exactly why it would stop.

Wow!!!

Fortunately this specific email address is one that I use as a spam catcher. I give it to entitys that I do not wish having my ISP email address and from whom I expect I will get irrelevant or spam email.

But you have to wonder about people not keeping track of what they hand out!
 
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eyoungren said:
Just got one! :D

My last name is uncommon, but not so rare that other people across the US don't share it. In fact, more than one person actually shares my first and last name spelled the same way.

<...snip...>
Click to expand...

Are you monitoring your credit bureau reports just to make sure there’s no improper reporting going on?
 
Kind of. Some guy halfway around the world used my email accidentally as his recovery. So I'd sometimes get sign-in alerts in two languages. It took me a couple weeks to find their residence and call them up using a VOIP line and explain what was happening. We both went into our individual accounts and removed and confirmed the removal. Apologies were made and we went on our merry way.

Looking back, I can understand why it was mistakenly used. First time in 13+ years of having that email, though.
 
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Gutwrench said:
Are you monitoring your credit bureau reports just to make sure there’s no improper reporting going on?
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As in actually pulling my credit reports via paid services or the once a year freebie? No.

As a member of Credit Karma and part of the service offered during the Experian breach? Yes.

The people I refer to are real, I've been in touch with the wife of one and in communication with the other. All these incidents occurred over the last 10-12 years. I joined Credit Karma a little over two years ago and anything impacting our credit reports has occurred by us over the last two and a half years.

Our credit finally got strong enough in 2015 to allow us to obtain vehicle loans and just recently to buy a house. There's nothing in those reports that was erroneous. Anything that was negative or bad we did to ourselves (my wife and I).

So, I understand what you're getting at with the question but nothing like that has occurred.
 
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Yeah, I have an unusual surname in the states, but there are a few around with it (and more abroad).

I’ve gotten a lot of email intended for a distant cousin. And I’ve gotten a bunch of junk, including order confirmations, for some woman across the country who shares my surname.

I’ve been invited to a third grader’s birthday party (doubtful they’d be happy if I showed up). For a while I was on a parents’ email list for an elementary school class. That took quite some time to get off of.

I’ve been asked for letters of reference from students who think I’m a different professor (from a different university, one I did my studies at). I’ve been sent extra credit assignments for classes I certainly don’t teach.

I’ve been sent sensitive real estate paperwork.

I can only imagine how bad it might be for people with more common names.
 
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2-3 times a week from all over the world, but mostly Denmark. Usually receipts. Some services. Some health test results. Business communication. Birthday party invite.
 
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I haven't had emails, but I did get some texts the other day for someone's hair appointment.

Some interesting stories over here, including stupidity from Apple by asking security questions when you click "this wasn't me"!

I particularly enjoyed this bit...

With the latest AT&T Account I got so fed up with the emails I logged in to change the email address. The customer re-set the password using their cellphone and changed the email address back to mine. Argh!!
Click to expand...
 
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BenTrovato said:
My email is xyz@gmail.com but I always get x.yz@gmail.com's emails. I get their emailed gas receipts, chipotle orders, kids soccer registration, nordstrom purchases, hotel bookings...
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I've had a parallel sort of experience with one of my gmail accounts. It's fairly common, I think, since Google even has a link to a way to specify the exact construction, i.e., positioning of the extra dot(s) of the address you want your setup to be dissociated from. Somehow it doesn't stick though, or rather, another one may turn up. I had mails from a second one appearing for awhile. It was slightly different construction but the same problem and with that same gmail setup of mine... and that second one was Brazilian for god's sake. I figure ok I was trying to learn Portuguese anyway but not for that particular reason. I kept getting the person's requests from Facebook to finish completing their FB setup... lol junking those did them a favor... I finally detached myself from that one too.

Eventually I guess you could get run through all the possible combos of a particular "xyz" with the dots parked different places and you'll finally have peace and quiet, because google doesn't permit actual re-use of a particular construction in a gmail setup process, even though it doesn't later seem able to sort out usages, i.e. that mail to say xy.z is not the same as to xy.z or to xyz
 
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bopajuice said:
To clarify is it someone with that same name and email account exactly? In other words if their email name is joeblow@aol.com are you getting email for joeblow@aol.com of email for say joeblow@gmail.com which would be your email address? Is it a case of just the wrong email service with the same name?
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In my case…

Same name and someone who shares the same first initial. Either they are handing out my email address or getting confused about their own as my email account is the first initial and last name (see my username). Or someone else is. Thus it ends up in my Inbox.
 
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SandboxGeneral said:
That makes a little more sense as they're not as likely to be very tech savvy at that age
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I could take offense at that, but I'll give you a pass, this time.
I'm 82 and have been involved with computers since they first became popular, both as a hobby and in industrial control systems as an industrial automation technician.
I will agree though that there is a big difference between being tech savvy and the seeming addiction to needing the latest and greatest.
 
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A few years back this happened to me when I was using Hotmail for my email. As an early adopter my Hotmail address was firstnamesurname@hotmail.com. It was a bit heartbreaking though. A father trying to get hold of his son who shares my name. At first I ignored the messages thinking they were spam, but increasingly they became pleas for replies, with the Dad apologising profusely for something that had happened between them and telling what he thought was his son how much he loved him and wished him to be happy.

So I responded, just letting him know that he had the wrong person, how sorry I was about the situation, and how I hoped they would be able to contact each other and sort things out. Obviously I never heard back after that, but I do sometimes wonder if it all worked out OK. Really hope it did.
 
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There's something to be said for using numbers at the end of an email address. I use an odd combination, and I think that's largely why I'm not bothered. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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