gmail security contact...

LoLth

does anyone know how to contact an actual person that can help with Gmail?

I have had a gmail address for aaaaaages in the form of firstname.surname@gmail.com .

now, it seems that there is someone in the states with the same name as me using firstnamesurname@gmail.com and I'm receiving some (not all) of his email.

Its not spam. Some of it is very personal information (online dating profile/login details , case files from when he worked as a legal representative for supervised state organised visitation session with children - seriously I was getting full details incl. child names, flight details, where they were staying, parent names, legal guardian names, D.o.B etc etc - , I've been receiving interview schedule offers, online shopping receipts etc etc).

now, I've tried to contact him with no response.

I've tried to contact google tech support but keep getting directed to the online help which doesnt help.

I delete anything that's not for me without reading (after the first wtf-is-this period) but I am concerned because if I'm receiving his stuff and he's not noticing it going missing, is he receiving copies of my mail?

any thoughts on how to talk to an actual person that could help out?

witnessmenow

gmail ignores full stops

If I have the email address myemail@gmail.com

m.y.e.m.a.i.l@gmail.com would still get to me

so they must have a different email account firtnamelastname1@gmail.com or something or maybe the name is being missed typed.

eire_sai

http://www.google.com/intl/en/contact/

or

Google Dublin
Google Ireland Ltd.
Gordon House
Barrow Street
Dublin 4
Ireland
Fax: +353 (1) 436 1001

syklops

witnessmenow wrote: »

gmail ignores full stops

If I have the email address myemail@gmail.com

m.y.e.m.a.i.l@gmail.com would still get to me

I started writing a post in response to this saying how much I doubted that and if that were true then huge amounts of email would get misdelivered. Then, not wanting to risk appearing wrong on the internet, I tested it for myself and found, it is in fact true.

Mind. Blown.

Is this a bug or a non-disclosed feature?

John.Smith@gmail.com can get JohnSmith@gmail.coms email? :eek:

OP, not sure I can help.

Edit: Explanation here

LoLth

syklops wrote: »

I started writing a post in response to this saying how much I doubted that and if that were true then huge amounts of email would get misdelivered. Then, not wanting to risk appearing wrong on the internet, I tested it for myself and found, it is in fact true.

Mind. Blown.

Is this a bug or a non-disclosed feature?

John.Smith@gmail.com can get JohnSmith@gmail.coms email? :eek:

OP, not sure I can help.

Edit: Explanation here

I know its true. Thats what I thought too. But I'm still receiving his email and some of it is pretty official stuff (its sporadic though not persistent) so I doubt the email address he gave is wrong. he'd notice if some of this stuff wasnt delivered to his mailbox - which is why I think I must be receiving a duplicate.

gmail lets you register with one "." in a user name but the "." is removed when the account is created.

My concern is that this may not always have been the case. I signed up for gmail under my address when gmail was in public (invite based) beta.

LoLth

eire_sai wrote: »

http://www.google.com/intl/en/contact/

or

Google Dublin
Google Ireland Ltd.
Gordon House
Barrow Street
Dublin 4
Ireland
Fax: +353 (1) 436 1001

tried the online. you get phone numbers for the US, not for dublin or english speaking europe (damn my anglocentric education! why cant they have a tech support desk in Latin?).

Dont really want to resort to using winfax to send 'em an email but you never know. ma have to in the end.

hardCopy

I get the same. At least once a month I get mail that was meant for my namesake. I've contacted several members of his family who usually apologise profusely only to email me again a month later. Now I just mark them as spam and unsubscribe to anything that wasn't for me. The last one I got was from Dun & Bradstreet in New Zealand, I've gotten links to half completed job applications in the past.

the_syco

I tracked my other self. I still get the odd email, but it was an honest mistake. My name would be John.Doe@gmail.com and his email would be JohnKDoe@gmail.com but his friends would email my address. In the end, I found out that his family was from Ireland originally, and had gone over to America about 40 years before the American Civil war, and that his grandfather/father/him were all journalists. Very interesting.

Most time your work mail would be John.Doe@army.mil and your personal mail would also be John.Doe@yahoo.com, but if you joined gmail late, it may be John.Doe57@gmail.com but friends would assume it's John.Doe@gmail.com

Heck, I've even gotten username and passwords for a childs school. I asked them to take my name off the list, and their reply was "the child gave us this email address", so I sent another mail to their tech support CC'ed the school principal person. Still got emails. So I emailed their tech support, and CC'ed their entire board of directors, a couple of teachers, the principal, and asked why they are sending emails that allow a complete stranger access their childs roster. Emails stopped abruptly.

bluferbl

Maybe the guy in the States set up a 'Reply to' email address and made a typo. Just a thought.

TheBoffin

Same thing happens on my email account. For those that had gmail accounts since the invite only days, it is possible that you can receive an email from a firstname.lastname address. Google back in the early days made a change where if you had firstnamelastname@gmail.com then firstname.lastname@gmail.com would also work, i think this changed with the googlemail vs gmail intro (not sure, i had this explained to me before after i spent months complaining to google)

Long story short, I have and still often do get other peoples mail, one of which was extremely interesting and I reported it and got a nice reward for doing so. They informed me that they get the email also, so i dont need to worry about deleting them.

Nowdays I just filter the first.last@gmail.com mails to another folder and delete em.

h57xiucj2z946q

first.last@gmail.com is also same as first.last@googlemail.com

900913

You can also send to gmail using a "+" sign.

eg.
firstname.surname+anything_here_after_the_plus@gmail.com

firstname.surname+anything_here_after_the_plus@gmail.com

syklops wrote: »

I started writing a post in response to this saying how much I doubted that and if that were true then huge amounts of email would get misdelivered. Then, not wanting to risk appearing wrong on the internet, I tested it for myself and found, it is in fact true.

Mind. Blown.

Is this a bug or a non-disclosed feature?

John.Smith@gmail.com can get JohnSmith@gmail.coms email? :eek:

OP, not sure I can help.

Edit: Explanation here

Spear

And an oddly well timed entry from XKCD:

Blowfish

900913 wrote: »

You can also send to gmail using a "+" sign.

eg.
firstname.surname+anything_here_after_the_plus@gmail.com

I've used that before as a handy way for spotting who's giving your email addy away. Anything you sign up to should be <firstname>.<surname>+<website>@gmail.com

28064212

Blowfish wrote: »

I've used that before as a handy way for spotting who's giving your email addy away. Anything you sign up to should be <firstname>.<surname>+<website>@gmail.com

Yep, always use that for any kind of registration. And it's extremely irritating when website forms don't have proper email validation, and reject addresses with a '+' in them

syklops

900913 wrote: »

You can also send to gmail using a "+" sign.

eg.
firstname.surname+anything_here_after_the_plus@gmail.com

Yes I know now. If you read the link in my post it explains all.

Khannie

Another early adopter of gmail here and I have a jbloggs@gmail.com style address. I get a lot of mails for anyone starting with my initial (joe bloggs, john bloggs, jane bloggs, etc.)

You could try looking up the punter on facebook. I tracked down one of my alter-egos that way. You have their general area + name. Worth a shot.

wandererz

"That" mail seems to use a closest match process.
In my case, if an email address is close enough to mine then i receive their email

Perrrfect. So much for confidentiality!

900913

Sorry I didn't see the link, I been using the + for a while now and many sites like facebook are patched for it.

syklops wrote: »

Yes I know now. If you read the link in my post it explains all.

RangeR

I have a similar issue but actually totally different. I have a firstname.lastname@gmail.com address too. However, I'm receiving some emails for some woman in Texas. Every now and then, her and her friends email each other about dinner parties. Sometimes, I make a recommendation on what they should eat. The first time I did that, they were VERY surprised. Now, they are shocked if I DON'T reply.

All this time, they never once include my email address.

On the not related note : Her email address is nothing like mine. It's totally different, other than the gmail.com part. Quite frustrating, to be honest, as I'm always getting fashion emails from various online stores, obviously sent to her email address but I still receive them.

Never knew who in Google to talk to about it, or if they would even listen.

LoLth

RangeR wrote: »

Never knew who in Google to talk to about it, or if they would even listen.

its this ^ that I have an issue with. Every response here has been guesswork. quite good guesswork and I'm sure based on experience and research but the only people that can answer with full knowledge of the system are those that work on the system and can see whats happening in the background. Its not in their online help and I cant find a way to contact them to ask a question that is not pre-defined for me.

still, misery loves company so its good to hear I'm not the only one having weirdness going on

@Khannie : I looked up the guy and found him on LinkedIn and he is registered with that email address so he must have gotten the email from them to confirm his membership but when I trie dto mail him through linkedin the email came to my account! (but I haven't received any other linkedin related emails, ever and he's been on there for a few years from what I can see)

I can see what I *think* is happening . but I cant really trust gmail for personal messages until I know what's happening or an engineer can take a look at it and explain to me why it cannot be happening the other way (I don't want my personal medical details / pay details / research correspondence going to an unknown person in the States - which I know, is sort of ironic given the PRISM thread!)

The_Conductor

I'm another jdoe@gmail.com type address from the time of the public beta.

I get an interesting array of psychology class notes and assignment submissions- directed to jane.doe@gmail.com (as Jane.Doe is a psychology lecturer in a university in Alberta). I also get included on lots of motivational type e-mails, that I'd really rather not get, from her friends.

I've an unusual family surname- so I figured her correct e-mail address and pop her a mail every now and then with family information or get-togethers (we have a few every year in various parts of Canada, the US and Australia).

Khannie

LoLth wrote: »

@Khannie : I looked up the guy and found him on LinkedIn and he is registered with that email address so he must have gotten the email from them to confirm his membership but when I trie dto mail him through linkedin the email came to my account! (but I haven't received any other linkedin related emails, ever and he's been on there for a few years from what I can see)

That is weird. The only think I can think is that he could have registered with blah@yahoo.com then changed to lolth@gmail.com at a later date.

LoLth

Khannie wrote: »

That is weird. The only think I can think is that he could have registered with blah@yahoo.com then changed to lolth@gmail.com at a later date.

good point. never thought of that. Though it doesn't explain why I don't get all the "X wants to meet you" and "Y looked at your profile today for 10 hours. Y might be a stalker" notifications linkedin sends out. There is activity on the account but I don't get the notifications so they must be going to an inbox that isn't mine with the title "firstsecond@gmail.com" that this other guy is using.

that's what has me concerned. If I received all mail sent to first.second and firstsecond I think I'd be ok wit it and I'd just delete the stuff not meant for me but it looks like gmail is working correctly 99.9% of the time just hiccupping every now and then and, if it can hiccup one way then surely there is a risk that it can hiccup the other and email meant for first.second gets delivered to firstsecond . I'd also like to know if he actually has firstsecond registered and if so, how it happened because if one of us was there first then it should not have allowed the second to register with an email address already taken.

hardCopy

LoLth wrote: »

good point. never thought of that. Though it doesn't explain why I don't get all the "X wants to meet you" and "Y looked at your profile today for 10 hours. Y might be a stalker" notifications linkedin sends out. There is activity on the account but I don't get the notifications so they must be going to an inbox that isn't mine with the title "firstsecond@gmail.com" that this other guy is using.

that's what has me concerned. If I received all mail sent to first.second and firstsecond I think I'd be ok wit it and I'd just delete the stuff not meant for me but it looks like gmail is working correctly 99.9% of the time just hiccupping every now and then and, if it can hiccup one way then surely there is a risk that it can hiccup the other and email meant for first.second gets delivered to firstsecond . I'd also like to know if he actually has firstsecond registered and if so, how it happened because if one of us was there first then it should not have allowed the second to register with an email address already taken.

Reset his password, log in as him and change the email address n his settings.