I signed up for gmail and have a simple account name in the form of {common firstname}{first letter of last name}@gmail.com. The amount of crap that has started

I signed up for gmail and have a simple account name in the form of {common firstname}{first letter of last name}@gmail.com. The amount of crap that has started to show up in my inbox over the last year is completely ludicrous--and I believe it's all from people who, like you say, just don't know how email works. As of today, my account is associated with seven addresses--that is, seven people said my email address was their alternative email address. 2,000 messages in the spam folder over ~1 month. Sometimes a dozen can hit my inbox per day; But, I'm guessing these are legit newsletters that people use my address for. And someone in South America used it to sign up for a facebook account. I was getting slammed with his friend requests and lost password requests until I just filtered them out. sigh ... Rant over, and I feel better.