Fesshole 🧻Someone has an almost identical Gmail address as mine, but without the dot between first name and surname. However, Google doesn't care about the dot and I get most of their emails. I just cancelled a golfing holiday to Scotland for them. I can't stand golf.
Andre Louis
Kirsten Louis@FreakyFwoof @fesshole yes. I was getting their university info and book lists from an American state college.
Scott@MoonCat @FreakyFwoof @fesshole I get sent complementary tickets to some classic car bullshit from a chap called John. Each time I set him straight he acts like it's my fault lol.
Big Pawed Bear@Scott @MoonCat @FreakyFwoof @fesshole I got sent someone's medical records. I contacted the sergery and got a very appologetic person on the end of the line. I gave them all my email addreses and said, "if your patients come up with any of these, they're not theirs."
Pomegranate_Stew@bigpawedbear @Scott @MoonCat @FreakyFwoof @fesshole
I received someone’s financial information from their broker. Informed the broker they should probably make a call to the guy who was supposed to receive it to find out what his actual email address is. Never heard back, but stopped getting those emails.
I received someone’s financial information from their broker. Informed the broker they should probably make a call to the guy who was supposed to receive it to find out what his actual email address is. Never heard back, but stopped getting those emails.
Geoff 🏴@pomegranate_stew @bigpawedbear @Scott @MoonCat @FreakyFwoof @fesshole Yup, been there too. House purchase and some expensive holiday bookings. I stopped getting the emails after a few corrections and now worry that the clearly quite elderly not.me@ has died :/
Advanced Persistent Teapot@MoonCat @FreakyFwoof @fesshole I have at least 3 contenders for mine. One guy in Portland, OR with lots of medical issues, another in Georgia who likes musical theatre, and someone in Florida who drives a Mercedes
Borris@MoonCat @FreakyFwoof @fesshole My partner was getting some pretty juicy stuff for someone. Correspondence from lawyers, divorce papers, car payment details, etc.
onnob@fesshole ha, I have this as well. Car insurance, ebay bids, job offers, bank statements, logins for streaming services. . All because george, graham, graeme and gemma robberts/robinson share a nickname that happens to be my mail address. So I surprised Gemma with some Slayer on her Deezer playlists. It’s inverted identity theft basically. Here, take my data.
Axel@fesshole
Same here. I get (g-)emails for people in France, Mexico and Indonesia. Even contracts show up now and then. I wonder why no-one ever complained to google about it.
Or does Google simply send it to *both* mailboxes?
Jyrgen N
GJ Groothedde 🇪🇺@fesshole Doesn't matter. I cancelled your subscription to that kinky porn site in return.
Robin Neal@fesshole Gmail hasn't acknowledged dots as meaningful characters in my memory. I've always used arbitray `.` within an email to sign up for services multiple times without making new emails.
I doubt it's just due to the missing period.
Gavin@SudoCat @fesshole yeah, I don't believe this is possible because Gmail has always "normalised" addresses to the no-dot format (and even has help articles explaining such). Same with @gmail and @googlemail I think, from when it turned out Gmail was trademarked already.
I also have someone who does this who drives a Kia from Bill Byrd in Florida. But it's only with that company so I think they've just either given the wrong address or the Kia dealers wrote it wrong. Not Google's fault.
Stomata
Lorenzo@Stomata @fesshole yes. Even if you can use only the format you used during registration to login, Gmail doesn't care about the dots in the address and forwards all the emails to you. I think it was designed to avoid confusion and preventing two different people holding the same name.surname and namesurname address. The issue is that if you have a common name, likely you'll have someone with the same name who thinks that your address belongs to them even if they never registered.
Baggypants@Baggypants @fesshole planet earth
Bård H. (lvl 49 🇳🇴)My wife had to deal with this on a regular basis for years!
There is a woman in Denmark with same first name, and same first leter in her last name. She uses minus as separator. But when she gives the address to companies, she tend to say "dot" instead, which, of course, Google ignores.
We've contacted her repeatedly, but she never learns.....
(We refuse to believe all those companies simply made the same moronic mistake, so we blame her instead.)
Malin Dixon
Arik
wei3@fesshole i once had a real estate agent asking me when I’d come around to pick up the keys for my new flat. stopped bothering after he told me to stop making fun of him as it was me who’d actually made the mistake here. after that i missed out on quite a lot of business opportunities in the global steel market; weird to witness what people use their gmail for though
Carlos SolísHappens to me with several people that clearly wrote their email address in a paper sheet, somebody guessed a letter wrong, and now I'm receiving their bills with no way of me reporting the error back (as they're from another country and I'd need to make an account physically to report the issue)
Fonant@fesshole Gmail ignores any, and all, dots in the local part of @gmail.com email addresses.
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
Are treated as the same address.
Artha 🐲🏳️⚧️@Fonant Huh, that's interesting. I've noticed that a lot of spam bots that try to sign up to my site use gmail address with a ton of dots. I guess this explains it; more mails for the same account.
BillFUCK GOOGLE!
Why do they ignore a perfectly valid character in the left hand side of the address? Other than they can because they are an 800 pound gorilla.
jack@w_b @fesshole FUCK GOOGLE but this is a good idea, it would be really dumb to let [email protected] and [email protected] belong to different people and go to different inboxes
likewise they treat [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] as equivalent even though the email spec says these are three different addresses
and [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] also go to [email protected] (and will get automatically placed in inbox subfolders named work, travel, or whatever)
@w_b @fesshole in short - fessor is wrong, the other person's gmail address is [email protected] or some other address that's more different than "mine, but with a dot between the first and last names". the other person is just terrible at remembering or accurately relaying their actual email address. or their partner's doing the booking and providing the wrong address by mistake
@jackeric @w_b @fesshole
That was the issue with mine (not gmail). Whoever was using it was leaving off a number at the end when they’d give out their address. Aside from financial info, I was getting republican spam, so I signed them up for emails from democratic candidates once I figured out what their address was supposed to be.
That was the issue with mine (not gmail). Whoever was using it was leaving off a number at the end when they’d give out their address. Aside from financial info, I was getting republican spam, so I signed them up for emails from democratic candidates once I figured out what their address was supposed to be.
Space Invader@w_b @fesshole it isn’t Google, it’s part of the email specification. Last updated in 2008 in https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5322 but originally specified in 1982: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc822
Every standards-compliant email provider will ignore a single “.” character and disallow it at the start and end of the local part (the left-side portion of the email address when a domain is specified)
Mark Mason@spaceinvader @w_b @fesshole I read that as only the start or end like
Comrade elronxenu@fesshole That's not their address, it's your address.
Allinrep ☕️@fesshole Relate. I have dotcom and they have dotse. Started back in 2013 when they were a teenager, and I've forwarded tons of emails since. But now they are a lawyer, and I cancelled a booking for eight persons at a fancy restaurant for New years eve...
catflyhigh@fesshole
My local pub's phone book entry was once incorrect. Instead of their own number, it listed the number of the bowling alley. It was quite amusing; the pub owner always took the reservations, naturally without informing the bowling alley owner.
My local pub's phone book entry was once incorrect. Instead of their own number, it listed the number of the bowling alley. It was quite amusing; the pub owner always took the reservations, naturally without informing the bowling alley owner.
Tryst 🏴 🇮🇪 
@fesshole A golf club emailed me under the same circumstances. I emailed back to let them know that the email address was incorrect. They asserted that it was correct and demanded to know how I had access to their member's emails. Definitely not the sharpest niblik in the bag, there.
rivets
"Mutant Rob" Robert RothenbergThat's bogus. Google ignores the dots.
youe.name@gmail and y.o.u.r.n.a.m.e@gmail are the same as yourname@gmail.
Charles ☭ 
is a GreenI get so many gmail emails meant for other people. The flip side of this is that any fuckup of my email address is also a valid email address that belongs to some other person, who is also ignoring a bunch of email not intended for them.
So one day, I got a text message from a publisher clarifying that that the reason I had been ignoring their emails and missed a deadline was because I wanted to drop out. They spelled my name wrong and it didn't bounce.
Since then I moved email addresses and now reply to messages not meant for me.
IanMoore3000@fesshole will always remember the time I got an email meant for someone with a v similar Gmail address to me from his girlfriend asking about how his trip to the STD clinic had gone
Minkiu@fesshole this happens to me as well, the other person uses TikTok, I don't, and tried miserably to reach them so they can change their email (tiktok blocks my messages, its an new account with a disposable email). Everyone I explain it to, tells me to just close the account down, but can't bring myself to do it.
Ian K Tindale@fesshole this is actually quite an astounding security hole (not so much hole, more like a gigantic roaring purple throbbing whale’s rectum of security considerations at the design stage).
I know dot addressing in gmail allows me to put a dot in my name as everyone expects it should work, but it also allows me to not put the dot and it still works, and I could put a dot inbetween each letter of my name and it still works. If this is the case, and it is a known feature, how on earth is it also possible to then have someone else register an account with any of those combinations that were possible from your original email address? Surely this is something a computer could be programmed to work out, and stop it?
I know dot addressing in gmail allows me to put a dot in my name as everyone expects it should work, but it also allows me to not put the dot and it still works, and I could put a dot inbetween each letter of my name and it still works. If this is the case, and it is a known feature, how on earth is it also possible to then have someone else register an account with any of those combinations that were possible from your original email address? Surely this is something a computer could be programmed to work out, and stop it?
GreatLakeTroutI have the same thing happening to me. I get utility bill notices from someone who lives on the other side of the US. I am almost ready to cancel my Gmail account. I have been working on eliminating it on accounts for a year and am basically done. Goodbye Gmail. Goodbye Google. Good riddance
Ronan@fesshole If that is the case, they don't "have" that Gmail address, they just hand out yours, effectively. (Sh)it happens. I know a number of people do that with mine, and it is very annoying. Some subscribe that address to party newsletters, thankfully not from the Republicans. (1/4)
The one I liked was that of congresswoman Barbara Lee, who turned out to be one of the few people you really want to see in politics — outspoken proponent of civil rights, gun control, anti-war positions, cutting defense budget, climate action, affordable housing and health care, pro-choice, abolishing death penalty, you name it. I'd vote for her in an instant if I could. So I staid subscribed to her newsletter for a while. (2/4)
Josh N. in Las Vegas seems to have noticed and finally given Uber a correct address of his own, but I still occasionally get some pharma rep's messages for a dermatologist James N. in Berkeley. The family of a Jessica N. stopped sending me updates about their grieving the death of a loved one, not after I simply asked them to, but only when I started to annoy them back. (3/4)
Once I got an invitation for a fishing weekend somewhere in the US midwest. I replied that this message was misdirected and got back an apology from the sender for mistyping his brother's address. But he also pointed out I was still welcome to join them! I had to decline due to other plans on another continent. That was one of the nicest interactions I had via email at all. (4/4)
Juggling With EggsI used to regularly get an American guy’s cardiology appointments (odd because I’m a British woman)…when they finally stopped I wasn’t sure if my repeated efforts to get the clinic to correct their records had succeeded or he’d just died. I’ll never know.
dumdumdelish@JugglingWithEggs @fesshole If you really got his appointment emails you can definitely figure out what state he's in and use the date of the last email to find out if he's dead via obituary websites 🤔
I did as you suggest…and thankfully no sign of an obituary since I received the last email relating to him in September last year (when there had been a flurry compared to previous years). The way my surname is spelt is more common in the US than UK, so I just assumed there would be loads, but thankfully not too many in New Jersey. A success for data admin at last then!
@JugglingWithEggs @fesshole Well thank goodness!!! maybe here soon you'll be surprised by another appointment email.. lol
trainguyrom@fesshole I changed phone numbers about a decade ago. Someone named Jerilynn still hasn't learned that their phone number has changed and enters my number into tons of crap. Mostly it's spam calls and texts that my phone helpfully ignores but I'm most concerned about the Life Alert calls I get every once in a while for them
Negative12DollarBill@fesshole Same happens to me but the other guy is a famous scientist. I send emails on to him and once he helped my kid with their homework.