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I get something similar. I was an early adopter of a popular email service, so I managed to get <firstname><lastname>@<emailservice>.com. Pretty neat, pretty si

I get something similar. I was an early adopter of a popular email service, so I managed to get <firstname><lastname>@<emailservice>.com. Pretty neat, pretty simple, right? Except I have a really common name, and people seem think that if the email address has their name in it, it must be their email address. I get sign-ups for Facebook all the time. I get emails about credit scores that make me panic until I realize I didn't sign up for that service. The other day I got an appointment reminder to take my Vauxhall into the shop for service (I live in the US, we don't have Vauxhall here). Email is hard and confusing for a lot of people. It's easy for us to forget that.

theOnliest 10y ago
I have a very uncommon name (3 of us in the country, as far as I can tell), and this happened to me for the first time this weekend. Someone bought a stereo at Best Buy 500 miles from me and gave them my email (<firstname><lastname>@gmail.com) for the Geek Squad protection plan. I thought someone had stolen my credit card until I realized what happened.
- nashashmi 10y ago
  Someone signed up with my email address on to hotmail and then a couple of months later hit "forgotpassword", attempted changing the password multiple times, then got in and changed the email address. I got so sick and worried that I got hacked. Turns out they selected the wrong email address when signing for hotmail, and then changed the address to the correct one. it threw me in circles.
- magnet_ball 10y ago
  I have something of a young name which is also uncommon, not many people over 30 with it, when I was young I googled my full name and got only one result, today when I google myself I find a ton of people who are usually my age or younger. There aren't a lot of people who are using my email, one is an older folk who uses it, and I always mean to contact him, and one was a DJ which accidentally used my email address instead of his.
ghaff 10y ago
I have <firstname>@alum.wellknownuniversity.edu. Apparently I was early on in getting an alumni forwarding address. It hasn't happened in a while but I used to regularly get emails for other people--including, for a time, board meeting notices and info for some company or other. (I did send a reply to the effect that maybe they shouldn't be sending these to me but never got a response.)
Ivoah 10y ago
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1279/ https://xkcd.com/1279/
elFarto 10y ago
I'm amazed how many people get their email address wrong. I have <firstname>.<lastname>@gmail.com, which is fine, and hardly gets any mail meant for someone else. <firstletter><lastname>@gmail.com however, is basically unusable. Funny thing is, the latter was the one I created first, but I forgot the password so had to create the other. I managed to recover it later and I'm glad I have the former.
- shkkmo 10y ago
  Sort of off topic, but did you know that the '.' gets ignored in gmail addresses, you can remove it or add extras and you will still get the email.
  - OJFord 10y ago
    And you can also interchange `gmail` and `googlemail`, append `+anything` to alias. It's a slippery slope though - forget worrying about remembering or managing passwords, you have to deal with variations of an email address too. Further, email clients will reply from whatever address you used to setup the client. Maybe you can add aliases, but that will be time-consuming, and even where supported there's usually a single-digit limit. This can cause real headaches - e.g. "reply with `UNSUBSCRIBE` in the subject line to be removed from this list" and being unable to reply from the right email address.
  - ptmcc 10y ago
    This is true in general, but some of the very early Gmail addresses do differentiate based on the '.' For instance, my very early-adopter Gmail address has a '.' in the address but it is an entirely different account from the one without. If you send mail to the one without the '.' I do not receive it.
    - fowl2 10y ago
      God I love edge cases / grandfathering
- yock 10y ago
tacoman 10y ago
I have the same problem with gmail. 90% of the email I get to my gmail account is for someone else. I'd stop using that account in a second, except I bought ~$100 worth of Android apps over the years using that email address and last time I looked I couldn't transfer them to a new account.
DanBC 10y ago
The English NHS has a similar problem. firstname.lastname AT nhs dot net Or firstname.lastnameNUMBER if there's more than one person with your name. Since the NHS is one of the largest employers in the world you'll find things like john.doe58@ It sucks.
dnr 10y ago
Yup :( My email is <first name><middle initial>@gmail.com (six characters total) and I get about 1-1.5 misdirected emails per day. Receipts, phone bills, homework, meeting minutes, personal messages that someone passed away, angry email from a homeowner to his general contractor (in Botswana), and even a international love letter. It's quite annoying, but the worst is sites that make it very hard to unsubscribe, or don't understand that it's possible for someone to enter an email address that doesn't belong to them in a form. In one case (a bank), I actually had to call customer service on the phone to get them to disassociate my email address with someone's account. In the case of the love letter, I thought I should reply to say that the intended recipient didn't get the message, but when I did, the sender got really confused and didn't understand that she had mis-typed the address.
- zao 10y ago
  Good thing you're not sucked into the systems of UPS. They refuse to talk to anyone not the sender or receiver. I've got an annual delivery of an expensive watch in my inbox like clockwork every year.

theOnliest 10y ago

I have a very uncommon name (3 of us in the country, as far as I can tell), and this happened to me for the first time this weekend. Someone bought a stereo at Best Buy 500 miles from me and gave them my email (<firstname><lastname>@gmail.com) for the Geek Squad protection plan. I thought someone had stolen my credit card until I realized what happened.

nashashmi 10y ago
Someone signed up with my email address on to hotmail and then a couple of months later hit "forgotpassword", attempted changing the password multiple times, then got in and changed the email address. I got so sick and worried that I got hacked. Turns out they selected the wrong email address when signing for hotmail, and then changed the address to the correct one. it threw me in circles.
magnet_ball 10y ago
I have something of a young name which is also uncommon, not many people over 30 with it, when I was young I googled my full name and got only one result, today when I google myself I find a ton of people who are usually my age or younger. There aren't a lot of people who are using my email, one is an older folk who uses it, and I always mean to contact him, and one was a DJ which accidentally used my email address instead of his.

ghaff 10y ago

I have <firstname>@alum.wellknownuniversity.edu. Apparently I was early on in getting an alumni forwarding address. It hasn't happened in a while but I used to regularly get emails for other people--including, for a time, board meeting notices and info for some company or other. (I did send a reply to the effect that maybe they shouldn't be sending these to me but never got a response.)

Ivoah 10y ago

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1279/ https://xkcd.com/1279/

elFarto 10y ago

I'm amazed how many people get their email address wrong. I have <firstname>.<lastname>@gmail.com, which is fine, and hardly gets any mail meant for someone else. <firstletter><lastname>@gmail.com however, is basically unusable. Funny thing is, the latter was the one I created first, but I forgot the password so had to create the other. I managed to recover it later and I'm glad I have the former.

shkkmo 10y ago
Sort of off topic, but did you know that the '.' gets ignored in gmail addresses, you can remove it or add extras and you will still get the email.
- OJFord 10y ago
  And you can also interchange `gmail` and `googlemail`, append `+anything` to alias. It's a slippery slope though - forget worrying about remembering or managing passwords, you have to deal with variations of an email address too. Further, email clients will reply from whatever address you used to setup the client. Maybe you can add aliases, but that will be time-consuming, and even where supported there's usually a single-digit limit. This can cause real headaches - e.g. "reply with `UNSUBSCRIBE` in the subject line to be removed from this list" and being unable to reply from the right email address.
- ptmcc 10y ago
  This is true in general, but some of the very early Gmail addresses do differentiate based on the '.' For instance, my very early-adopter Gmail address has a '.' in the address but it is an entirely different account from the one without. If you send mail to the one without the '.' I do not receive it.
  - fowl2 10y ago
    God I love edge cases / grandfathering
yock 10y ago

tacoman 10y ago

I have the same problem with gmail. 90% of the email I get to my gmail account is for someone else. I'd stop using that account in a second, except I bought ~$100 worth of Android apps over the years using that email address and last time I looked I couldn't transfer them to a new account.

DanBC 10y ago

The English NHS has a similar problem. firstname.lastname AT nhs dot net Or firstname.lastnameNUMBER if there's more than one person with your name. Since the NHS is one of the largest employers in the world you'll find things like john.doe58@ It sucks.

dnr 10y ago

Yup :( My email is <first name><middle initial>@gmail.com (six characters total) and I get about 1-1.5 misdirected emails per day. Receipts, phone bills, homework, meeting minutes, personal messages that someone passed away, angry email from a homeowner to his general contractor (in Botswana), and even a international love letter. It's quite annoying, but the worst is sites that make it very hard to unsubscribe, or don't understand that it's possible for someone to enter an email address that doesn't belong to them in a form. In one case (a bank), I actually had to call customer service on the phone to get them to disassociate my email address with someone's account. In the case of the love letter, I thought I should reply to say that the intended recipient didn't get the message, but when I did, the sender got really confused and didn't understand that she had mis-typed the address.

zao 10y ago
Good thing you're not sucked into the systems of UPS. They refuse to talk to anyone not the sender or receiver. I've got an annual delivery of an expensive watch in my inbox like clockwork every year.