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Miss-directed Email

jadebox said:
Boy, I sure derailed this thread. Nevertheless, I came back after I saw today's xkcd (https://xkcd.com/327), but someone beat me to it. I was also going to mention a co-worker who often had issues with online forms since his last name only had two letters - Ng.

I got annoyed the other day by a site that required at least six characters for the responses to their security questions. Not one of the answers I would have used had six characters or more.
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I also worked with a guy who had only one name -- his last name. It was apparently not too unusual in the culture he came from. It caused him a lot of problems with things like his driver's licence.
 
I have a Gmail address that someone else thinks they own. I have had their emails. Even worse someone stored some photos in my google drive. They are not my photos either. The real owner has never come forward asking for their photos back. I think the source of the problem is that Google gave out two email addresses to two people, one of whom was me, then combined them and gave the merged one to me.

The only major downside is that now I get two people's worth of spam in my spam folder. Most of it is for the other person.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
I also worked with a guy who had only one name -- his last name. It was apparently not too unusual in the culture he came from. It caused him a lot of problems with things like his driver's licence.
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Mononyms are common in Indonesia. Neither Sukarno or Suharto had any other name. I had an Indonesian co-worker for a while who had to just make up another name so Boeing could pay him.
 
Trebuchet said:
Mononyms are common in Indonesia. Neither Sukarno or Suharto had any other name. I had an Indonesian co-worker for a while who had to just make up another name so Boeing could pay him.
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My guy had a PhD so, some of the time his first name was Dr. ;)
 
rjh01 said:
I have a Gmail address that someone else thinks they own. I have had their emails. Even worse someone stored some photos in my google drive. They are not my photos either. The real owner has never come forward asking for their photos back. I think the source of the problem is that Google gave out two email addresses to two people, one of whom was me, then combined them and gave the merged one to me.

The only major downside is that now I get two people's worth of spam in my spam folder. Most of it is for the other person.
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Gmail does do some weird things. My kid gets email where the name is misspelled. First.Last@gmail, FirstLast@gmail, and First_Last@gmail all go to their inbox, even though only one of those are their actual email address. It is weird.

Also, I once put the wrong email for my wife in a group chat. I realized it and corrected it within a few days. People in that group were still using the wrong email a decade later. The recipient was annoyed and would let it be known. Yet, people assumed my wife was just being weird and moved on. I’m not saying that is why we aren’t in that group anymore, but it did create a lot of misunderstandings.
 
Dr. Keith said:
Gmail does do some weird things. My kid gets email where the name is misspelled. First.Last@gmail, FirstLast@gmail, and First_Last@gmail all go to their inbox, even though only one of those are their actual email address. It is weird.

Also, I once put the wrong email for my wife in a group chat. I realized it and corrected it within a few days. People in that group were still using the wrong email a decade later. The recipient was annoyed and would let it be known. Yet, people assumed my wife was just being weird and moved on. I’m not saying that is why we aren’t in that group anymore, but it did create a lot of misunderstandings.
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IIRR Gmail disregards '.' at least in email addresses
 
Dr. Keith said:
Gmail does do some weird things. My kid gets email where the name is misspelled. First.Last@gmail, FirstLast@gmail, and First_Last@gmail all go to their inbox, even though only one of those are their actual email address. It is weird.

Also, I once put the wrong email for my wife in a group chat. I realized it and corrected it within a few days. People in that group were still using the wrong email a decade later. The recipient was annoyed and would let it be known. Yet, people assumed my wife was just being weird and moved on. I’m not saying that is why we aren’t in that group anymore, but it did create a lot of misunderstandings.
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catsmate said:
IIRR Gmail disregards '.' at least in email addresses
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Correct. But this started only a few years ago. Until then someone else owned the email address without the dot and I owned it with a dot. They combined them and I got both of them.
 
My gmail address is my first name and a few numbers. I regularly get misdirected emails.

The most annoying ones are those from people who have mistyped their own email address when setting up an eBay or Netflix account, or such. This actually prevents me from creating my own account on that service. I can access the account from a password reset request, and then delete it, but I cannot then set up my own account with my email address since it is locked.

I have never been able to watch Greyhound, since someone locked out my email address on Apple in this manner.
 
BillC said:
My gmail address is my first name and a few numbers. I regularly get misdirected emails.

The most annoying ones are those from people who have mistyped their own email address when setting up an eBay or Netflix account, or such. This actually prevents me from creating my own account on that service. I can access the account from a password reset request, and then delete it, but I cannot then set up my own account with my email address since it is locked.

I have never been able to watch Greyhound, since someone locked out my email address on Apple in this manner.
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If they have given your email address can you not simply ask for a password reset and use it?
 
rjh01 said:
This might even be useful. If you need to provide your email address, but suspect spammers might get hold of it from them put some dots in the address. Make a note of this fact. If you then get spam with the dots you know the source. There is another way to do the same thing, but I have forgotten this method.
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Or you could use (for example) yourname+co@gmail.com which routes to yourname@gmail.com. This can be used for routing and spam detection via mailbox rules.
 
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