OT: Strange Gmail emails received

JoeJoe · 2019-10-25T08:41:52+00:00

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, then all mail sent to johnsmith, even with as many "." inserted within it (e.g. will arrive at your mailbox - you basically own johnsmith and all its variations that include ".".His email address is of the type " ".Recently he's started receiving emails addressed to 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).

Oct 25, 2019 Last reply: 7 years ago 45 Replies

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Bob Eager 7 years ago

At least one university round here uses the word 'semester' to refer to a period of teaching. It isn't that uncommon in the UK.

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Bob Eager 7 years ago

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Daniel James 7 years ago

Not necessarily, no ... but unusual enough, I think, that it should make one suspicious ... at least at first.

"Canterbury Christ Church University"? I thought I was looking at the page for an institution in New Zealand, for a moment! That's presumably a new university/former polytechnic ... it certainly isn't the University of Kent at Canterbury.

One counterexample doesn't mean that it's common.

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Robin 7 years ago

Fill your boots:

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Bob Eager 7 years ago

differ-

It's been around for quite a while now (14 years). Not as long as the University of Kent (there *is* no University of Kent 'at Canterbury', and there hasn't been for about 15 years), of course. Former teacher training college and all sorts, but they only adopted the term 'semester' recently. Was never a polytechnic, unusually. They had degree courses long before that, but UoK accredited them.

Also Loughborough, Exeter, Edinburgh, Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield, Hertfordshire, ...

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