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Who here gets other people's email?

SoggyCheese said:
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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That's sad.

One of those things you can only hope worked out.
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maflynn said:
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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At the time I got this address (1999) I was hoping my name was unique enough to allow me just to use my last name. Nope. Numbers were suggested, so I had to settle for my second choice.

Little did I know then that several people out there shared my exact first name and last name. When most of the people you grow up with have common names you begin to think yours isn't so common only to find out it's common enough later on.

Had I to do it over again and knowing what I know now, I'd choose something else.
 
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I get emails to my .mil address for a civilian who shares the same first initial and last name but luckily it is nothing that shouldn't be sent by email. On my spam Gmail account I get emails for someone else and I assume they have the same username just at another provider.
 
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The only time I received email intended for someone else, it was from a relative and intended for my parents. We all happen to be on the same small, local ISP. Despite being the last to set my email, I got lastname@localprovider.com. When I told him my email, my dad looked at me and said, "You can do that?"

The big thing is all my emails either are uncommon ISP's or don't use my name (like ejb190), so I really haven't had an issue.

My first name is not uncommon and my last name is much more common on the east coast than here in the midwest. I can see some trouble coming in the near future. There's an up and coming film editor who shares my name (Aside: I wrote a "life list" some time ago - #34 was "Get my name in movie credits". Check!) There is also a breakout high school football player.
 
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ejb190 said:
(Aside: I wrote a "life list" some time ago - #34 was "Get my name in movie credits". Check!)
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There’s a good chance that might finally happen for me this/next year for real. I’ve been supporting film productions for years, but there’s two I’m working on at the moment where my involvement has been much higher profile. Crossing all 16 of my fingers*

*16 from being a gorilla and all ;)
 
Yes! Or at least I used to until I changed my e-mail address. One person with my exact first and last name lives within 5 miles of me. Not related at all. He actually took over my Facebook account and I was forced to abandon it. Contacted Facebook several different times about it and was completely ignored. Used to get mail for him and his father who was a government contractor. Know all kinds of info on them. Happy it’s over though. I understand that there could be as many as 6 other people throughout the world with your exact name. Or at least first and last anyway.
 
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rem2 said:
I understand that there could be as many as 6 other people throughout the world with your exact name. Or at least first and last anyway.
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I have at least two LinkedIn contacts with my exact name.

There's another person with my name in Los Angeles (graduated high school a few years ago) and there's at least one other in the midwest that didn't answer my friend request when I was on Facebook.

Periodically I scan for people with my last name and make contacts with them. It's interesting.

But so far, yeah about four people I know of with my exact first and last name.
 
I keep getting email meant for some fella in Colombia. We apparently share the same first name, but that’s about it.

Not only is a good chunk of it seemingly important (“We need your signature on this”, “The sign-in credentials for this project are missing”, etc.), but the most frustrating part of it is that a lot of times they send it to both my email address and his at the same time, so I’m assuming this guy is giving out both email addresses as his.
 
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In my case, the persons email is different only by the dot but it's a completely different person. I imagine they are using their email as normal but have no clue I'm getting a message of theirs every once in a while. It makes me wonder if they might get a message intended for me from time to time.
 
I had a bunch of emails from an Australian lady's clothing company confirming my order etc.
I contacted them and explained that the gmail address was mine and they had made a mistake.
A few months later it happened again.

When it happened a third time I logged into her account, changed her shipping address and the email address on the account (mine). Seamed to do the trick!
 
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Apple fanboy said:
I had a bunch of emails from an Australian lady's clothing company confirming my order etc.
I contacted them and explained that the gmail address was mine and they had made a mistake.
A few months later it happened again.

When it happened a third time I logged into her account, changed her shipping address and the email address on the account (mine). Seamed to do the trick!
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Upvoted for apropos typo du jour.
 
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I think this could be more common than people think... All you need is someone else's email, from a friend and sign up under your own name, but enter their email instead..

You'll only find out when either the customer signing up receives no responses, or you get in contact with someone who has.

Email's addresses aren't always verified, which makes them an easy target.
 
I have some code that nearly perfectly mimics our company email. So, about once a year I address an email to a coworker from one of our VP’s saying “come see me.” Then I sit back and watch the coworker get up and go into the VP’s office. They chatted a while as they do then there was dead air. They thought each other wanted something.

Finally the VP said, what do you want? My coworker said, huh? What do you want? And so the dialogue went on. The VP said he didn’t send any email. Then the coworker returned to his desk and forwarded it the VP. They talked and scratched their head. Finally it dawned on my coworker it might have been me pulling a practical joke. Haha. I am a practical joker indeed. I used to pull them when I worked the street too.
 
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Nermal said:
A friend of mine's mother got in early enough to get her first initial, i.e. a one-letter email address!
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That's awesome I wish my email address were just my first initial.
Apple fanboy said:
I had a bunch of emails from an Australian lady's clothing company confirming my order etc.
I contacted them and explained that the gmail address was mine and they had made a mistake.
A few months later it happened again.

When it happened a third time I logged into her account, changed her shipping address and the email address on the account (mine). Seamed to do the trick!
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Good move! I wish I thought about doing something like that.
Krayzkat said:
I ‘bought’ my www.firstnamesurname.com domain just so I could make my own email addresses. I use email@firstnamesurname.com for normal email and have a spam@firstnamesurname.com for all the crap (this website too lol).

So I never get any mistaken identity emails.
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I considered doing that but never actually did it. Did you register the domain yourself or through a company such as Go Daddy?
 
bauediemauer said:
I considered doing that but never actually did it. Did you register the domain yourself or through a company such as Go Daddy?
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Through a company like GoDaddy, it's something like £15 a year, so more expensive than a free Gmail account but it's so easy to say to people "my email address is email at my name dot com"
 
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