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There is a long paper trail full of evidence of my attempting to contact people to get them to stop sending me someone else's email. If some idiotic prosecutor

There is a long paper trail full of evidence of my attempting to contact people to get them to stop sending me someone else's email. If some idiotic prosecutor can't tell the difference between some jerk in Missouri and me, they deserve the judge's derision when the confusion is uncovered. Gmail does not allow changing email addresses, and if I delete the account, I lose access to a recovery email that I'm executing a multi-year migration away from. That's simply not an acceptable step to take to mitigate the unlikely risk you describe. There's also some jerk at AOL who forwarded their email to me mistakenly over a decade ago, and I've tried to contact AOL, which of course they won't consider since I'm not the person who set the broken forward. While I appreciate your concern, I've already taken it into consideration as best as permitted by the tools available. If you are aware of a way to change a gmail address without creating a new Google Account, then of course I would love to hear about it.

OldHand2018 5y ago
It's a lost cause. I'm over a decade into the transition you are undertaking and I've basically just accepted that it will always be an account I can't get rid of - so I use it as a "you need my email address but I don't trust you" account. Nobody ever has any concern if you give them a gmail account. Over 50% of the email this account receives is for other people and frequently the "To:" field isn't even an exact match for my address! If you do start getting stuff that looks like it might cause you problems: be proactive. Do not wait around to embarrass some prosecutor. By that time, you've already spent thousands of dollars and had your reputation dragged through the mud. I once started getting legal threats meant for someone else. I had a lawyer call up that lawyer and it was cleared up in less than 10 minutes. Another time I started getting emails from/to a person with the same name as me at the State Department that definitely should not have been sent through a non-government server. I talked to someone I knew at the US Attorneys Office about it and those emails stopped immediately (doubt that guy still works there, LOL).
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  Yes, none of it was ever a lawyer.
U8dcN7vx 5y ago
I believe the suggestion is to do something about the account on the other service that has been pointed to your address, e.g., if United Airlines is sending you mail about flights you never booked, perform a password recovery on the UA account thereby locking out the person that entered the wrong email address. I'm not sure I agree. But then it doesn't often happen to me.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  That could be inferred as unauthorized computer systems access under various laws, so I don't personally, but it's definitely something you can try to do in varying degrees.

OldHand2018 5y ago

It's a lost cause. I'm over a decade into the transition you are undertaking and I've basically just accepted that it will always be an account I can't get rid of - so I use it as a "you need my email address but I don't trust you" account. Nobody ever has any concern if you give them a gmail account. Over 50% of the email this account receives is for other people and frequently the "To:" field isn't even an exact match for my address! If you do start getting stuff that looks like it might cause you problems: be proactive. Do not wait around to embarrass some prosecutor. By that time, you've already spent thousands of dollars and had your reputation dragged through the mud. I once started getting legal threats meant for someone else. I had a lawyer call up that lawyer and it was cleared up in less than 10 minutes. Another time I started getting emails from/to a person with the same name as me at the State Department that definitely should not have been sent through a non-government server. I talked to someone I knew at the US Attorneys Office about it and those emails stopped immediately (doubt that guy still works there, LOL).

floatingatoll 5y ago
Yes, none of it was ever a lawyer.

U8dcN7vx 5y ago

I believe the suggestion is to do something about the account on the other service that has been pointed to your address, e.g., if United Airlines is sending you mail about flights you never booked, perform a password recovery on the UA account thereby locking out the person that entered the wrong email address. I'm not sure I agree. But then it doesn't often happen to me.

floatingatoll 5y ago
That could be inferred as unauthorized computer systems access under various laws, so I don't personally, but it's definitely something you can try to do in varying degrees.