OT: Strange Gmail emails received

[JoeJoe]

Posting a question on behalf of a friend who'd asked me for help?

As some of you probably know (I didn't until I looked into this), gmail email addresses ignore ".". So, if your address is say, [e-mail], then all mail sent to johnsmith, even with as many "." inserted within it (e.g. [e-mail], [e-mail]) will arrive at your mailbox - you basically own johnsmith and all its variations that include ".".

His email address is of the type " [e-mail]".

Recently he's started receiving emails addressed to [e-mail], [e-mail], and a few similar ones - not a flood, just a few here and there. Problem is that the emails look 100% legitimate. They were sent by what appears to be real people/organisations to real people, and are about real issues. For example, from a local university department, to a student, discussing registering for a course for the net term, or from Netflix to a customer with the usual upcoming new movies reminder. Nothing to suggest anything wrong. I had a look at the headers of a couple, and they all look legitimate too.

He is not too bothered about receiving a bit junk mail, but is concerned that perhaps if he can see their emails than those people have access/receive his emails too.

I am a bit confused? Any thoughts?

My advise to him is to change his password, and try to contact one or two of the senders to see if anything makes sense (but I am aware that data protection will probably be an issue and they will refuse to discuss).

[Brian-Gaff (bed 2)]

I've never heard of this but any time I create a gmail account it always wants a number in it, so if it were the case that you own the whole thing, then I'd expect to see this every time and lots of people would be getting it. Might be worth reporting it to Google incase its an issue. Otherwise, I'd create a new address and tell everyone you are changing. Its a pain but there you go, free email is worth all you pay for it. Brian

[Andy Burns]

I don't think it's ever worth reporting anything to google ...

[Tim+]

As you say, gmail ignores full stops in the address. By the same token, I?d bet that it considers all variants of an address with or without full stops as the same and won?t allow someone to register another address that only varies by the position of the full stop. In a sense, you ?own? all possible variants as the dots are ignored.

There is no other johnsmith, johnsmit.h, john.smith, jo.hn.sm.it.h etc, registered with gmail, just ?johnsmith?

Tim

[Robin]

I have a similar gmail address and have had a steady trickle of such emails for years. I may respond if they look to be important - eg an invitation to lunch that day;) Where I've had replies they confirm the simple explanation: someone has an address such as john.a.smith which the sender gets wrong.

[Martin Brown]

Send them back a missive saying "This isn't me" please remove from your circulation list. Failing that use kill file routing rules to stuff them into a dark corner and ignore them.

With a surname like Smith, Jones or Brown you get used to redirecting mail to one of your Dopplegangers if you recognise who should have got it. Usually it is a typo by the sender that collides with you.

[michael adams]

If its a "local" university then this strongly suggests that they also have their address. This would strongly suggest targetted spam.

This wouldn;'t necessarily be anything to worry about - identity theft or anything but is an amost inevitable consequence of filling in online forms which require both pieces of information; the formet merely to confiirm that the order oe whatver has been placed.

When you say "local university" do you mean a traditional university or some jumped up college offering courses in things like "Wellness" or "Beauty Therapy " ?

Were Netfix or anyone similar to send out targetted spam, then this is precisely the sort or information they would include. Are you sure your friend has never enquired about any of this stuff in the past maybe via a website,, and forgotten all about it ?

michael adams

....

Nothing to suggest anything wrong. I had a look at the

[Tim+]

That would be really stupid as they are all his address and will just come back to him.

As someone else pointed out, the emails were probably typos for real similar addresses like john.a.smith.

Tim

[JoeJoe]

The email address was created a long time ago, so the policy might have been different.

[Bob Eager]

Noooo. "Send them back". To the sender.

[Michael Chare]

I didn't know but I see I can put periods in my gmail account name and they appear to get ignored. So what happens when you try to create an account with a period if there is another account which would be the same if the period is ignored?

[JoeJoe]

Sorry, should have made it clearer.

It was from a university within the same country.

The email goes along these lines:

As requested, I put your name down for the exam in course XXX for this semester. Please note that the material for the course is available free from the Open University website here (correct web link - it looks like it is a pre-uni type of course for those who do not have the required credits).

The payment for the exam should be settled prior to the exam date, either through your university account of over the phone (web link not given, checked the phone number provided - it is the correct one for the university's accounts department).

Signed with a signature that includes the correct address, phone number, etc for the department at the university.

All in all - everything looks legit.

He doesn't and has never had a Netflix account and never interacted with them.

[JoeJoe]

Not worried about that - just worried that they receive his emails too...

He is going to change his password at my advice.

The name is not Smith - only given as an example. According to Google there are only 4 other people sharing his name in the country.

[JoeJoe]

Haven't tried it, but I suspect "name already in use" error or similar.

[Richard Kettlewell]

I know multiple people who see similar behavior. What is going on is that there is a small population of people who are confused about what their own email address is, and enter someone else?s address when asked for it by their university, netflix, etc.

It could either be that their real email address is [e-mail] or similar and they?re bad at remembering the number part, or that they have a totally incorrect mental model of how email addresses actually work and genuinely believe that [e-mail] will reach them because that?s their name.

I don?t think this is likely.

That won?t hurt but it?s not going to stop anyone sending him email.

It?s worth a try but the my friends who?ve had similar experience mostly find this a frustrating exercise.

[Brian-Gaff (bed 2)]

OK, I just tried a few on my gmail account and dots seem to work, so i suspect nobody can register another fred bloggs with or without dots, and this seems to even include numbers, ie fred1blogs can also have dots in it. Seems a bit odd when you think of how many email addresses this means are no longer going to be used since I doubt the system could then allow you to open another one with anything like your name in it , ie if the only difference was where the dot is and how many there are, which would suggest all the emails you have have been mistyped by the senders, so I'd just turn them around with not known at this address and advising them of the dot issue and telling them to get back to the person and ask for the right addresses. Brian

[michael adams]

Fair enough.

It does indeed look as though they have somehow confused the addresses then.

Ideally your friend should contact all the organisations sending the emails informing them of this, as presumably the intended recipients may not have recieved anything.

And without knowing any more it seems quite possible that other people may be receiving emails addressed tio him, which aside from the privavcy issue may mean that he didn't receive them himself.

In which case of course he may never know how many emails he's missed from other senders of which he was never aware at all.

Indeed. Just as he's never had any dealings with the OU.

michael adams

...

[michael adams]

Assuming these people, including the OP's friend all have failrly common names that seems a fairly convincing explanation.

Insofar as they never recieved any acknowledgement or insofar as they continued to get misdirected emails from those senders ?

michael adams

...

[michael adams]

As Richard Kettlewell's explanation below - idiots mistyping their own email addresses on forms - sounds the most plausible the above two paragraphs of mine are clearly a load of old cobblers.

michael adams

...

[Brian Reay]

I know someone who experienced this problem, it isn?t uncommon.

They managed to contact the intended recipient, who shared their name. They didn?t have a Gmail account BUT were with someone who used Gmail as a backbone it turned out. They ( the intended recipient) queried it and, in simple terms, the explanation they were given is the system tags the Email with another address which should be removed and the original put back. Sometimes it fails and the system tries to match the now stray message to a known Gmail user. While it could explain what happens I am not entirely convinced.

In this case there was no real threat to the incorrect recipient, if anything it was the correct recipient?s details which were leaked- address, phone number, I believe some part of their credit card details. (It was a receipt.)