I'm not who you think I am...

May 21, 2012 1:36 PM

How can I stop receiving other people's email that have the same name as me?

It all started out simply enough... I got an email meant for someone else with the same name. So I emailed the sender back and told them they had the wrong address.

My email address, hypothetically, is [e-mail]

There's LOTS of joe schmoe's in the world.

But I get all the 'correctly' addressed emails from [e-mail] in Australia, and the emails from [e-mail] in Tennessee.

What can us joe schmoe's do to make this stop? It happens more and more often, to the point where I've had to call other joe schmoe's to let them know everything from when to be at the soccer game coach meeting to what time they should be at their cousins wedding rehearsal dinner. I've checked, the emails are addressed correctly - at least to my non-techie eye that doesn't understand what may go on behind the scenes, yet I still receive their emails.

I'm starting to worry if sometimes they get MY emails too?

Help!

posted by matty to Computers & Internet (27 answers total)

If there is an effective long term solution I'm not aware of it.

I get tildee's and tillde's emails all the time. I reply, I forward, I ignore.

As mentioned in the bn thread below, I often will just (since I use the gmail system to host my email) make my email address (when possible) [e-mail], so I know I type it in "right" and it gets to me.

[e-mail]
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

and so forth.
posted by tilde at 1:39 PM on May 21, 2012

I don't know that this will help your situation, but just so that you're aware, [e-mail] is the same address as [e-mail] or even [e-mail]. (GMail doesn't care where your insert periods or how many you insert in the part of an email address preceeding the @ sign.)

Unfortunately, I don't know that there's a lot you can do. My wife also has a common (maiden) name, and all she can really do is write back to the senders to say, "Sorry, wrong address." She's probably missing the occasional email, too.

One thing you might try using is GMail Labs' "canned responses" feature. This allows you to create a form-letter type response that you can access from a drop-down menu without having to retype it every time.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 1:42 PM on May 21, 2012 [5 favorites]

You can add as many periods to a gmail address as you like and it's still the same email address, so joe.schmoe, joeschmoe, and j.o.e.s.c.h.m.o.e will all still come to your account. See "Receiving someone else's mail" from Google support.

"They" aren't getting your mail because "they" probably are actually [e-mail] or [e-mail] or something else entirely, and they just spaced out when dictating their email address to someone. You can't stop someone from being dumb and giving out the wrong email address; there are new, dumb joe schmoe's being born evvvvvvery minute.
posted by bcwinters at 1:43 PM on May 21, 2012 [2 favorites]

The last I'd heard, Gmail doesn't differentiate between email addresses with periods separating the names (hence the joeschmoe comes to the joe.schmoe address). I'm guessing it's the same thing with underscores. Most likely, these joeschmoes set up accounts under [e-mail], or some variation thereof, and are forgetting that on the fly.

Without knowing what their actual email address is, it'll be difficult to get into contact with THEM directly. I'd just keep letting the senders know that they need to get the correct info from the actual recipient, and hopefully with enough people asking them again, they'll memorize what their actual email is and distribute it.
posted by scarykarrey at 1:43 PM on May 21, 2012

joe.schmoe, joe_schmoe etc are all [e-mail]

Those other guys either don't know what their actual email addresses are, or their correspondents are incorrectly typing their email address. I have to deal with the former all the time, and other people probably occasionally have to deal with the latter because people think I can't spell my own damn name and spell it "lynn".

There is nothing you can do. You can choose to be zen about it, or you can rage, but you cannot stop stupid.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:43 PM on May 21, 2012

For what it's worth gmail does not care about periods in email addresses. Even if you signed up for your account as [e-mail], to gmail's servers you're [e-mail] and it's just smart enough to redirect [e-mail] to your inbox.
posted by radwolf76 at 1:44 PM on May 21, 2012

Lyn Never: "joe_schmoe"

Are you sure about underscores, Lyn? I thought it was just periods, and +string suffixes.
posted by radwolf76 at 1:46 PM on May 21, 2012

As others have said, Google ignores periods in email addresses and logins. If you are [e-mail], then no one else could sign up for [e-mail]. However, that doesn't stop Joe X. Shmoe from Kokomo from being confused about his email address, nor does it stop his correspondents from using what they think is his address. It's just like looking up Joe Schmoe in the White Pages (if anyone remembers those), picking the wrong one, and sending a snail mail letter to him instead of the Shmoe that you wanted to reach. It's your address, and it's wrong, but it can be hard to find out which Shmoe they actually wanted to reach.

I used to regularly get email for another Brian Ogilvie (an actor in New York) because I had the email address [e-mail], which many of his friends seemed to think belonged to him. Some of them were unpersuaded by my responses insisting that I was not, in fact, the person they wanted to contact.
posted by brianogilvie at 1:51 PM on May 21, 2012

Underscores definitely do not work in GMail addresses. I just tested it out myself.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 1:52 PM on May 21, 2012

This is happening to me too. My gmail address is something like [e-mail]. I get confirmations for eye appointments for j.smith, confidential emails, confirmations for all sorts of new accounts at several kids' gaming websites for j.smith... most worryingly, someone signed up for Facebook with my actual email address and somehow actually managed to confirm the creation of the Facebook account.... I'm at a loss on how to handle this, short of changing my email address to something completely unlikely.

How it is that these people managed to sign up to gmail and actually get j.smith as their email address is beyond me if gmail thinks they're supposedly the same thing.
posted by thrasher at 1:56 PM on May 21, 2012

most worryingly, someone signed up for Facebook with my actual email address and somehow actually managed to confirm the creation of the Facebook account.... I'm at a loss on how to handle this, short of changing my email address to something completely unlikely.

They probably verified it with a phone number. This is probably your best next step, thrasher.
posted by tilde at 1:59 PM on May 21, 2012

How it is that these people managed to sign up to gmail and actually get j.smith as their email address is beyond me if gmail thinks they're supposedly the same thing.

They didn't. They are just confused and/or typoing their actual email address all over the place.

This has been happening to me more and more over the past year or two. I've had the email addresses in question for nearly a decade, so it does seem to be a noticeable change.

In my case, if it's obviously a personal email (i.e., from a family member or a prospective employer or university -- and yes, all of those have happened!) I send a quick reply saying essentially "Hi, I think you have the wrong email address. Please double-check with the intended recipient." In most cases, I get a polite "thanks!" and never hear from them again.

If it's an automated email of any kind and there is an option to unsubscribe, I do. If it's an email confirming the creation of an account on some web site (I just got one the other day from Pandora that I did not initiate) then I go to the web site, reset the password, and request for the account to be deleted if that's easy to do. If it can't be deleted, then I just consider the account "mine" now, and the credentials get stored in my password vault in case I ever need to access it again. There's really no cost to having a dormant account out there that you never plan to use again, as long as it has a secure random password that you don't share with any other sites.

Sometimes there is no option to unsubscribe, or there is no easy way to reset the password of the associated account (maybe they set up some security questions that I can't answer). In those cases, I just delete the email and forget about it. I typically don't mark it as spam, because I don't want to someday miss legitimate email from that site if I decide to sign up for it myself.
posted by Nothlit at 1:59 PM on May 21, 2012

I get it too. I got more than 30 emails back and forth between some people about their dog's pedigree listing this weekend. I just dump them all in the trash.
posted by marylynn at 1:59 PM on May 21, 2012

I can't find it, but I know that there has been a thread about this. This is apparently pretty common for people (like me) who were able to get firstnamelastname gmail addresses.

Basically make your best effort to tell the senders that they have the wrong address, and if you know how to contact the other joeschmoe you can make that effort too, but after a while you just ignore it and realize it's not your problem. I kept getting emails from the same group of people for another person with my name who is involved at a synagogue somewhere in the Northeast, and nobody responded to my "hey wrong person" responses, so finally I just set them to filter as spam.
posted by radioamy at 2:00 PM on May 21, 2012

Here's the other thread about this - How do I go about contacting someone who has apparently confused my email address with her own?, and here is my comment there. The same thing happens to me still, at least three or four times a week. I don't think there is a fix for it, sadly. Depending on my mood, I either reply and let them know they have the wrong person, or I just delete it.
posted by ralan at 2:11 PM on May 21, 2012

I've checked, the emails are addressed correctly

No they're not. Your email address is [e-mail] (both with and without the period). They're addressing it to you. They don't mean to send it to you. So, they are addressing their emails incorrectly. You can't stop people from doing this, just like you can't stop people from mistakenly calling your phone number.
posted by John Cohen at 2:23 PM on May 21, 2012

most worryingly, someone signed up for Facebook with my actual email address and somehow actually managed to confirm the creation of the Facebook account

That's happened to me several times, even though I always click the "I didn't make this request" in the introductory e-mail. So if it gets to the point where they actually create an account, I go in and reset their password. Sorry, people who don't know their own e-mail addresses! Better luck next time!

If it's personal correspondence, I often will e-mail back and let them know that I got the plans for their bathroom remodel, or the music schedule for Sunday, not the person they intended.

There's not really a way to stop it.
posted by mgar at 2:28 PM on May 21, 2012

Response by poster: How it is that these people managed to sign up to gmail and actually get j.smith as their email address is beyond me if gmail thinks they're supposedly the same thing.

I guess that's the part I don't get.

I signed up for my account when Gmail was invite only, and since the Navy's way at the time of assigning work email accounts was [e-mail], I followed the same format with my gmail account.

NOW I find out periods don't make a difference? Uuuuugh.

Thanks all for the responses. I think I'm gonna start dreaming up a new email address....
posted by matty at 2:52 PM on May 21, 2012

Wow, I'm glad to see there are others who have this (admittedly trifling) problem.

I have two other Tevins: Tevin North and Tevin South. Tevin North is a religious fella who lives in Canada. Sometimes I get emails from his church, and sometimes they're rather personal in nature.

Tevin South is, so far as I can tell, a terrible person. I have received a couple correspondences from customer service people (how does that work, if they're responding to his emails?!) that describe their encounters with him and how they plan to resolve the conflict. I did, however, have a nice conversation with a hotel manager in the South where said Tevin lives and explain that he seemed like a massive tool and the manager was being far more patient than I would be.

Anyway. I wish I could fix this, because I feel bad for Tevin North who's probably wondering where all his email is going.
posted by Tevin at 3:22 PM on May 21, 2012

I haven't researched this in a while, but as I remember it, if someone signed up for [e-mail], no one else can sign up for [e-mail], or any other such variant. So, Gmail doesn't care about periods, but maybe not not in the way you're interpreting. The only way someone else's messages are getting to you is because someone typed the wrong address somewhere.
posted by divisjm at 3:46 PM on May 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

Previously, previouslier, and previousliest. No, you're not alone, and yes, this is getting to be a regular one on Ask, albeit slightly harder to search than some other common queries.
posted by deludingmyself at 4:17 PM on May 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

Oh yes, Echo0720 who is a 50something lady in the south regularly gives people my email address thinking its hers. She even bought someone a present and used my email address as the confirmation, so now I know her address, phone number and the last four digits of her credit card number, too. For a while there, her church book club invited me to their meetings, until I kept emailing to their 3000 reply-all messages that I was not her! I guess that's all you can do - keep replying to people and telling them to tell their friend (the other echo0720 in my case) to tell HER that she is giving out the wrong email address. It's been a few months, so hopefully she finally got the message.
posted by echo0720 at 4:54 PM on May 21, 2012

My gmail address is something like [e-mail]. . . . How it is that these people managed to sign up to gmail and actually get j.smith as their email address is beyond me if gmail thinks they're supposedly the same thing.

The OP: I guess that's the part I don't get.

Well, that's not how it works. Almost every comment in this thread is exactly right, but the above comment is mistaken. If your email address is jsmith, no one else can possibly have j.smith (or js.mith) as their email address.

NOW I find out periods don't make a difference? Uuuuugh.

Thanks all for the responses. I think I'm gonna start dreaming up a new email address....

I don't see why, unless you mean an email address from something other than Gmail. If you get another Gmail address, you're going to be in the same situation. The periods thing applies to all Gmail addresses.
posted by John Cohen at 6:38 PM on May 21, 2012

Happens all the time for me too. I have received all kinds of odd emails, obviously intended for someone else. I usually reply to say the email is wrong, or just delete it. For website memberships, I usually log in and delete the accounts as well. It's a nuisance, but it's not that big of a deal.

The only person who I loathe is the guy who keeps trying to sign up for Ashley Madison with my email, over and over, what an idiot! And I feel really bad for the poor guy who wrote to me, spilling his guts about his kinks, thinking he was emailing a dominatrix. I did not write him back to let him know he sent it to some random woman, as he sounded rather sweet really...
posted by gemmy at 8:17 PM on May 21, 2012 [1 favorite]

I think folks are just very inattentive when giving email addresses and/or just assume things. I used to get quite a few submissions to the Brown/RISD Clerestory where "clerestory" and "gmail" had clearly penetrated but they had missed the fact that it was [e-mail], not just [e-mail].

Another big problem I see is numbers - often, if someone can't get [e-mail], they'll try joe.schmoe0 or joe.schmoe1, etc. Those numbers, absent some outside meaning, are very easy to mentally drop. I have nearly done it to my mom's email address once or twice, when typing it anew (e.g. not in reply or out of an address book). I think when using names, particularly full names, as email addresses, some senders go on autopilot typing the name and then forget numerical suffixes. I've often wondered if switching to a numerical prefix (e.g. 1joe.schmoe) would be more reliable.
posted by clerestory at 2:13 AM on May 22, 2012

Happens to me ALL THE TIME. Someone once sent "her mother" (read: me) her bank account info. All of it! I could have emptied her account into mine! I deleted that one post haste.

As others have said, there's no real way to stop it but there's nothing to worry about. The other Joes just don't know their own email addresses, or their friends are guessing wrong (my boyfriend's name is close enough to a famous starlet that he gets emails from desperate fans fairly frequently).

The kindest thing you can do in cases such as this is to reply to the email and say, "I'm sorry, this is not the Joe Schmoe you are looking for. Please remove this address from your address books" and hope for the best.
posted by AmandaA at 7:07 AM on May 22, 2012

There's another reason this is a good idea:

[e-mail]
[e-mail]
[e-mail]

"tilde" is such a common email name that I get scams there all the time. In my spam folder are three emails from "Amazon.com" confirming my order deletion - but they are all addressed to [e-mail], not [e-mail] - so I know they are scams.
posted by tilde at 8:07 AM on May 22, 2012