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Been there. I posted about this before but I own a 5 character common first and last name @gmail.com address. I get misdirected emails _constantly_. Usually I
by liquidgecka 6y ago
Been there. I posted about this before but I own a 5 character common first and last name @gmail.com address. I get misdirected emails _constantly_.
Usually I am polite about it and let people know, but sometimes I make a game of it. I was invited to participate in a drum circle with an offer to pay for my flight to which I replied that I would love to join, but they would also have to pay for drum lessons. I got a mother insisting that I come home for the weekend to which I replied that I am home, perhaps she hadn't knocked hard enough.. etc.
At one point I got like 15 emails deriding me and my choice to "not support firefighters". Turns out that a member of a city council had listed his email as councilman.<me>@gmail.com and most people just ignored everything before that period. I took it as a challenge to see what the most outlandish thing I could say was that would be believed. Some of the better attempts: "My wife had an affair with a firefighter once!" and "My house has never burned down, why do we even need these guys?".. etc.
With most of the financial emails you can unsubscribe at least. =/
- saagarjha 6y agoThat poor councilman…
- jaredwiener 6y agoLikewise -- I fall firmly into this XKCD https://xkcd.com/1279/ https://xkcd.com/1279/ My e-doppelgängers have priced cars across the state of Ohio, been active in the PTA, pursued higher education in Germany, and seems to always be interested in commercial real estate in the outer boroughs of NYC. Though once -- I received an email asking me to please just apologize to my sister already. I replied, "I think you have the wrong email address; I don't have a sister." I saw a response -- "HOW COULD YOU SAY THAT? Your mother is crying." I thought it best to just walk away at that point.
- liquidgecka 6y agoReminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beb8zCGMsbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beb8zCGMsbI
- fishtacos 6y agoNever thought it'd happen to me, having come across this topic before, but I'm happy to say I can join this club. It's the same guy, who works in a Eastern European country, where I emigrated from. The first instance, he was asking his supervisor to use his vacation time so he and family could make a trip to Mecca for Hajj. I chuckled and ignored it. Second time random picture of some massive metal parts from what looked like some factory he works at. Third time was this year, very recently and I received a pretty unnecessarily detailed email about how he had to turn back home because he had soiled himself while driving to work... That one made me worry he had gotten Covid. I guess I'm this guy's boss now.
- djtriptych 6y agoalmost positive 6 is the minimum character length for gmail addresses.
- ahauxuueei 6y agoalmost positive 5 + 5 > 6
- liquidgecka 6y agonono.. its a single word that is common as a first and last name. There are a BUNCH of cases where its applicable! =) But yea, 5 characters. I was an early gmail SRE so I was able to circumvent the restrictions. =)
- anticensor 6y agoWas it <gecka@gmail.com> ?
- liquidgecka 6y agoNo.. but iirc I made that one at one point before abandoning it.
- liquidgecka 6y agoSee my comment above.. It is, I was a Gmail SRE that could circumvent the restrictions on that. =)
- pwinnski 6y ago> I own a 5 character common first and last name @gmail.com address Were you a Google employee? Or did you mean something other than how I read this, that your first and last name combined are 5 characters? Because I believe 5-character usernames are not permitted for gmail addresses. I tried to confirm this and provide a link, but all of support.google.com appears to be non-responsive right now. When it stars working again, this may support my assertion: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/9211434?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/9211434?hl=en
- liquidgecka 6y agoI was an early Gmail SRE so I was able to circumvent the restrictions. It was a bad idea it turns out. For a project I also created "spam@gmail.com" and caused a production outage due to the volume of mail it got forwarded. =) But yes your right, 6 characters is the minimum of "open" gmail accounts. I know of at least a dozen 2 character accounts created by insiders though.
- pwinnski 6y agoI am 'pwinnski' nearly everywhere now, because on April 1, 2005, I was not allowed to create a gmail account of only the first five characters. Goodbye to 15 years of the old 5-character username, and hello to what is now 15 years of the new 8-character username! At the time, I thought about pestering my Google-employee friends, but decided to just suck it up.
- boring_twenties 6y agoUnsubscribe, man, I'm jealous. Some dude 2,000 miles away from me has bought a Lexus and now I get regular emails about the status of his vehicle, receipts for all work done to it, and reminders of all maintenance not done to it. For a year and counting. Each email helpfully includes instructions for unsubscribing: First, you log into the Lexus app... I finally got fed up with it and reported them to abuse@.
- williamscales 6y agoWell, since you have the email, you can log in to the Lexus app. Then you could turn off the notifications.
- boring_twenties 6y agoI'm not sure about this but wouldn't that be a felony?
- treeman79 6y agoYes. 99.9% chance no one would care. But people do freak out over this stuff. Knew one guy that saw that a Bank got hacked on the news. Did an nslookup or similar to check the banks site. He was arrested the next day and expelled from college for hacking the bank. Eventually all got cleared up, but screwed up a year of his life
- dtparr 6y agoHe got expelled for running a DNS query? Do you mean nmap?
- treeman79 6y agoMaybe. Was awhile ago
- boring_twenties 6y ago
- adenner 6y agoAs the lucky early adopter of gmail I got my last name only @gmail.com. It has been a blessing and a curse. I have a boilerplate "you have the wrong address" email in multiple languages that I use to reply to the first email from real people. If they persist they then get added to my auto-reply "you have the wrong address" and delete rule. For automated emails, I don't even bother trying to unsubscribe. They all get added to the delete blacklist rule. Some of the more fun mistakes I have gotten have been multiple years worth of tax documents from New South Wales, Wine Tastings in South Africa, Church Choir concerts in Germany, and resumes for a receptionist in Colorado at a Gym.
- johnnyo 6y agoI have a similar address and get a lot of similar email. My personal favorite was a contract offer to play for a minor league baseball team in the Midwest a few summers back. I also once got hired by the National Park Service for what sounded like a nice gig as a park ranger.
- liquidgecka 6y agoOhh yea I forgot that I got mailed a bunch of movie pass financial details while they were still a hot property! That was.. erm.. eye opening.
- lokar 6y agoTry having a 3 char username (@gmail), it never ends.