4 ms·

I have a common last name and my email is my first initial and my last name. I get so much misdirected mail that I don’t even try to help these people. I hope

I have a common last name and my email is my first initial and my last name. I get so much misdirected mail that I don’t even try to help these people. I hope John gets to his zoom interview for Deputy Chief of Police later today, because I’m not going to tell him about it.

crftr 6y ago
I'm in a similar situation. I was lucky enough to claim my Gmail address during the beta. For the first few years I tried to be kind and alert the sender, but it just became impractical to do so. It breaks my heart when I see my name twin receiving state benefit notifications or HR notices at the wrong address. He's currently applying for quite a few electrician openings. Good luck, my man.
fnl 6y ago
Happens to me all the time, because my name is fairly common. Weird that Google wont "fix" that.
- dllthomas 6y ago
  I ... hope Google never tries to fix your name being fairly common.
- esnard 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, what would a "fix" look like?
  - laurent92 6y ago
    Never showing the email address to anyone, just letting you scan a QR code, or copy-paste a rich-text non-editable widget and passing it around. It is the same idea as not showing the URL in the address bar, it solves 1 major problem and raises dozen others.
SamBam 6y ago
Happens all the time to me. Some of my fellow [first-initial][last-names] are "smart" people -- a professor and a judge, among others -- and I know that they are putting in their own email wrong. I know this because I'm frequently getting mail from automated systems for something they filled out. I mean, I know there's an xkcd about this, but seriously? How do you mistype your own email address so often? In both cases, their real addresses are [first-name][last-name].
- manmademagic 6y ago
  Probably due to their workplaces using different schemes e.g. My personal is [firstname].[lastname] and work is [firstinitial][lastname] If I didn’t use macros I’m sure I’d eventually mix them up too.

crftr 6y ago

I'm in a similar situation. I was lucky enough to claim my Gmail address during the beta. For the first few years I tried to be kind and alert the sender, but it just became impractical to do so. It breaks my heart when I see my name twin receiving state benefit notifications or HR notices at the wrong address. He's currently applying for quite a few electrician openings. Good luck, my man.

fnl 6y ago

Happens to me all the time, because my name is fairly common. Weird that Google wont "fix" that.

dllthomas 6y ago
I ... hope Google never tries to fix your name being fairly common.
esnard 6y ago
Out of curiosity, what would a "fix" look like?
- laurent92 6y ago
  Never showing the email address to anyone, just letting you scan a QR code, or copy-paste a rich-text non-editable widget and passing it around. It is the same idea as not showing the URL in the address bar, it solves 1 major problem and raises dozen others.

SamBam 6y ago

Happens all the time to me. Some of my fellow [first-initial][last-names] are "smart" people -- a professor and a judge, among others -- and I know that they are putting in their own email wrong. I know this because I'm frequently getting mail from automated systems for something they filled out. I mean, I know there's an xkcd about this, but seriously? How do you mistype your own email address so often? In both cases, their real addresses are [first-name][last-name].

manmademagic 6y ago
Probably due to their workplaces using different schemes e.g. My personal is [firstname].[lastname] and work is [firstinitial][lastname] If I didn’t use macros I’m sure I’d eventually mix them up too.