email sent to wrong address

tech77

Hi.
I tried to send an email from my Gmail account to my sister's Yahoo account today.
My sister's Yahoo email address is quite similar to my Eircom email address- they only diffrer by a number.

Anyway I send the email and the email ends up in my Eircom account instead. :eek:
WTF?
An email meant for my sister's address ends up going to me.
This is totally unacceptable.

Can anyone tell me if they've come across this before.

I do intend talking to google about it but in the meantime i just wanted to check here if anyone here has had the same problem and if so what they did about it.

Also does this only happen with gmail or does it happen with other email clients as well do you know?

Any help much appreciated.
Thanks.

meglome

To be honest when I used to own a couple of internet cafes we would sometimes get people who for example couldn't get into their email accounts. According to them they were definitely using the correct password, no doubt about it. But in our experience they were using the wrong password or typing it incorrectly. So the point I'm trying to make is it's seems unlikely to me that this was a technical issue, much more likely to be a user issue. Of course there could be something setup incorrectly or forwarding settings which are wrong. My feeling is you selected the wrong address.

vir7ual

i have seen an email appear in my account which was no way intended for me. sister (sister@hotmail.com) sent email to brother (brother@hotmail.com) appeared in my account (me@eircom.net), all computers are in the one house but shouldnt think this matters just thought it was strange. when checked the to box it only had brother@hotmail.com and no other email address.

Bridan

I'd agree with meglome, you more then likely entered your own address rather then your sisters by accident, or you may have CC'd yourself accidentally. It's highly unlikely that gmail made a mistake such as this.

tech77

Bridan wrote:

I'd agree with meglome, you more then likely entered your own address rather then your sisters by accident, or you may have CC'd yourself accidentally. It's highly unlikely that gmail made a mistake such as this.

Nope.
When i checked the address in the 'to' line in the email that came to my account it is the correct address (ie my sisters email address)- yet it comes to my account.

Edit: Scratch what i said about the eircom account completely.
I mistakenly said above that it came back to my eircom address.

It actually came back to my original gmail address from which i sent the mail (this is set up as a pop account in outlook express).

But still a mail that i addressed to someone else came back to my own account- like it failed to send but i didn't get any failure notice (just the original mail back instead...).
Does this happen much.

irlrobins

I could be wrong here (as I don't access gmail via pop3) but because of the way gmail groups emails together as conversations, mail that you send via gmail will appear in your inbox if you were to access it via pop3. Rather than the traditional pop3 method of sent mail in the sent items folder and incoming mail in the inbox.

BattlingCheese

reckon irlrobins hit the nail on the head here.

nansus

I have got mail to my Gmail account not for me.
My gmail address is self.self @ gmail.com but I have got several mails for

selfself @ gmail .com (no dot between first and second name)

nansus

xabi

nansus wrote:

I have got mail to my Gmail account not for me.
My gmail address is self.self @ gmail.com but I have got several mails for

selfself @ gmail .com (no dot between first and second name)

nansus

Thats possibly what the sender has entered in their contacts as display name for you, with the proper email address in the background.

eg, if i type 'dick' into outlook it sends to 'robert@work.com'

irlrobins

Also a gmail specific issue. Gmail ignores '.' in addresses. So if your email is firstname.lastname@gmail.com then mail to firstnamelastname@gmail.com will also be delivered to you.

It's a security thing as far as I can tell. Prevents someone masquerading as someone else by having a very similar email address.

Cabaal

irlrobins wrote:

Also a gmail specific issue. Gmail ignores '.' in addresses. So if your email is firstname.lastname@gmail.com then mail to firstnamelastname@gmail.com will also be delivered to you.

It's a security thing as far as I can tell. Prevents someone masquerading as someone else by having a very similar email address.

Makes perfect sense to be honest, I'd rather they have this "feature" then not

killbillvol2

I started using gmail through POP3 a couple of weeks ago while I was away on holidays and irlrobins is correct. All your sent mail is collected and will arrive in your Outlook inbox (or whatever) if you've sent it through the web interface.
At first I was a bit confused but then realised it's incredibly handy. You send mail from an internet cafe and when you next use POP3 on your laptop you have a copy of the email. (Just create a rule to put it in Sent).
I've now got all my email accounts coming through gmail and have practically eliminated spam.

tech77

killbillvol2 wrote:

I started using gmail through POP3 a couple of weeks ago while I was away on holidays and irlrobins is correct. All your sent mail is collected and will arrive in your Outlook inbox (or whatever) if you've sent it through the web interface.
At first I was a bit confused but then realised it's incredibly handy. You send mail from an internet cafe and when you next use POP3 on your laptop you have a copy of the email. (Just create a rule to put it in Sent).
I've now got all my email accounts coming through gmail and have practically eliminated spam.

Ok thanks lads.
That sounds like it alright.
Wasn't aware of this feature at all.

One other thing someone might be able to answer for me.
Say i've set up pop3 gmail in such a way that i want to receive all mail from the beginning.

I find that if i ever have to then remove the pop3 gmail account from outlook express on my pc and set it up again the 'all mail from the beginning' setting no longer applies. It reverts back to getting mail 'from that date onwards'.
Is there any way of keeping it at 'all mail from the beginning'.

One more thing.
Is it possible to delete mail completely using the pop3 gmail account.
I find if i delete it from the pop3 gmail account it still remains in the deleted folder in the web gmail account.
I then have to manually delete it from the web gmail deleted folder.

Thanks again.