Someone using my Gmail address

gooner99

Hi. For the last few months someone in the US has been using my Gmail address which is simply my first and last names with no full stops or numbers. At first I thought maybe it was that the other person had a full stop in their address and I have read that sometimes Gmail have an issue with delivery with these. The other option is that the other person is using it knowingly as they have a different first name. I find this odd as they order stuff with my Gmail address as well as signing up to newsletters, mailing lists, etc. I tried to contact Google, but haven't found a way to do so. Anyone got experience of this. What are my best options?

TheW1zard

How did they get your password?

bren2002

It happens to be occasionally, I get emails meant for someone else with a similar address. I think that person's right address has a G in it . I tried contacting them a few times and got a load of attitude

I've super secured my account and now just delete them as they come in. Unsubscribe etc from lists.

5555555555

Change your password

Cobalt17

gooner99 wrote: »

Hi. For the last few months someone in the US has been using my Gmail address which is simply my first and last names with no full stops or numbers. At first I thought maybe it was that the other person had a full stop in their address and I have read that sometimes Gmail have an issue with delivery with these. The other option is that the other person is using it knowingly as they have a different first name. I find this odd as they order stuff with my Gmail address as well as signing up to newsletters, mailing lists, etc. I tried to contact Google, but haven't found a way to do so. Anyone got experience of this. What are my best options?

I think you can use 2 factor authentication with gmail. Even if some gets your password, they won’t be able to do anything with it.

bren2002

TheW1zard wrote: »

How did they get your password?

If this is the case, setup 2fa now and update the recovery account details. Then log the account out of all devices, there's an option in GSuite for that

thomas anderson.

Weird. Same thing is happening to me. Some dude in the states is singing up for things using my email address.

I'm getting emails from school's, restaraunts and even churches.

I reckon some old fella is miss typing

Darwin

Have you checked the last activity on your gmail account? See here:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/45938?hl=en


I think its pretty unlikely someone is using your account as they surely would have changed the password and locked you out. I actually have my own name registered to my gmail account as I got in at the very beginning, as in firstname.lastname@gmail.com.
However, I regularly get emails meant for other people who share the same name as me. That is because when they order something or sign up for a mailing list, they put in joebloggs@gmail.com or jo.ebloggs@gmail.com when in fact they will all get delivered to joe.bloggs@gmail.com
The position of the dot makes no difference. I'm guessing this is what is happening to you.

Uncle Pierre

I reckon he just means they're inputting his address by mistake when they mean to input their own. Same thing has happened me twice, both also with people in the USA.

My address is basically (first initial)(surname)(last two digits of year I was born)@gmail.com - example would be cmurphy72@gmail.com

For the sake of explaining here, don't mind saying that C is my first initial and I was born in 1972 all right. But my surname is not Murphy!

Anyway, was able to tell from content of mails that both people involved also had initial C and same surname.

One was a woman called Cheryl and could tell from emails that also contained her postal/shipping address (e.g. online order confirmations, or tracking emails for items ordered) that she was in Huntsville, Alabama. After I'd been getting them for a while, I actually posted a letter to that address one day. Still no idea what her correct email was and I never heard back from her, but I stopped getting them after that.

Other one involved a guy called Chris in Massachusetts. Ended up getting one that also included a phone number, so sent him a text message. Turns out it was regular typos, as the year he meant to put was 71 rather than 72.

So, if this is the kind of situation you mean, it could actually be innocent enough. Do any of the mails you've been getting have similar sort of contact details?

Darwin

Pretty much yes that is what is happening. I do get lots of personal details which I delete straight away and notify the sender if I can (lucky for them), but these people are being very careless.

gooner99

Sorry. Should have made it clear that I've not been hacked and no one is attempting to use my account. Yes I read that it can be as simple as someone inputting it wrongly or as joe.bloggs and it gets delivered to joebloggs. This apparently is a flaw in Gmail. Alas with no way of getting through to Gmail I will continue to mark as spam and unsubscribe where possible. Odd that one serial offenders first name is different to mine, so an odd typo to make. I need to see if I get the full name and address or phone number and try and bring it to their attention that way. I have replied to a few of the senders to highlight it, but never get a reply. The last one Today was a receipt from PayPal. I've asked them how the same email address can be used for two PayPal accounts. Will see what comes back. Alas I guess no reply.

afatbollix

It happened to me before. I actually was able to find them on Facebook and sorted it pretty quick.

It was a shame as it was a first-class plane ticket to the Caribbean and I had the same name so could of showed up..

But he was a doctor so would of felt bad.... Nice to see a Dr afatbollix out there.

TheW1zard

God help you if your name was john murphy or something! Thousands of emails coming in lol.

tedpan

FYI - I realised this today, very strange that it's happened to you too.

Dots are ignored by Gmail. For example, tedpan@gmail.com would still reach you if send a mail to t.ed.p.an@gmail.com

Very strange that it took me 15 years to understand I shouldn't put a dot in the middle of my name! Someone is using my email minus the dot of course to play fortnite

28064212

gooner99 wrote: »

Sorry. Should have made it clear that I've not been hacked and no one is attempting to use my account. Yes I read that it can be as simple as someone inputting it wrongly or as joe.bloggs and it gets delivered to joebloggs. This apparently is a flaw in Gmail. Alas with no way of getting through to Gmail I will continue to mark as spam and unsubscribe where possible. Odd that one serial offenders first name is different to mine, so an odd typo to make. I need to see if I get the full name and address or phone number and try and bring it to their attention that way. I have replied to a few of the senders to highlight it, but never get a reply. The last one Today was a receipt from PayPal. I've asked them how the same email address can be used for two PayPal accounts. Will see what comes back. Alas I guess no reply.

It's not a flaw, it's a deliberate feature. All of these addresses are the same account on Gmail:
[noparse]joebloggs@gmail.com[/noparse]
[noparse]joe.bloggs@gmail.com[/noparse]
[noparse]j.o.e.bloggs@gmail.com[/noparse]

The only person who ever received email for any of these was the one who set up the initial account. There is no misdelivery. What's actually happening is that someone thinks their email is [noparse]joebloggs@gmail.com[/noparse], but it's actually [noparse]joebloggs72@gmail.com[/noparse] (or in the case of the wrong first name, [noparse]johnbloggs@gmail.com[/noparse]).

To people who are reasonably computer-savvy, this seems almost impossible, to not know your correct email address, but there are a huge number of people to whom this is all magic and have no concept of what's happening. Plenty of them will think that "close-enough" is just fine for emails, same as it is for postal letters

Thoie

There's a woman in the US whose email I receive relatively regularly. Her gmail is JoeEBloggs@gmail while mine is JoeBloggs@gmail (she uses her middle initial, which happens to be the same as the last letter of our first names).

It's usually companies mishearing her or making typos when writing things down. Her boyfriend once sent me plane tickets, which was nice. I only bothered tracking her down when there was an important message about her wedding dress, in which they mentioned they'd lost her phone number.

She's got most things moved over to "her" account now. The odd one still comes through. If it's something important I'll send it on to her, otherwise I just delete it.

Uncle Pierre

Something similar with my wife'e gmail. She uses her middle initial too, which happens to be the same as the first letter of our surname, so for example it's auntppierre@gmail.com

Same thing with others either taking it down wrong or thinking they've typed it wrong when they see two letters the same, right beside each other, and they then send to just auntpierre@gmail.com instead.

The other woman somehow figured it out at some stage and has been forwarding stuff to my wife whenever it's happened since then. It's gotten to the stage where they're even Facebook friends now!

Heebie

It's probably not one "guy" signing your email up to lists or whatever.
Your address probably got sold by someone you interacted with, or someone who scraped it from somewhere, to spammers, or to people who profit when someone signs up to a site using a link provided... they sign up 20,000 people using an email list they get for a fiver, and make a profit.
It could also be someone who was getting the spam you get now... who changed the email address on the account so they would stop getting it.

Sadly there's not that much to be done other than make sure your password is good, and you have 2fa turned on.

Ave Sodalis

GMail is terrible for this. At one point, I was getting emails from people all over the place. Some lady is the US signed up for a science program, and I got all her emails about it. Another woman in Derry was apparently taking her dog to the vet a few months ago. It seems they let people join with dots in the address, and then don't differentiate between them when sending.

NSAman

Jaysus... i have been rumbled.


Is your email..fanny.obrien@gmail.com?

28064212

Ave Sodalis wrote: »

GMail is terrible for this. At one point, I was getting emails from people all over the place. Some lady is the US signed up for a science program, and I got all her emails about it. Another woman in Derry was apparently taking her dog to the vet a few months ago. It seems they let people join with dots in the address, and then don't differentiate between them when sending.

It's not gmail's mistake. If someone joins with [noparse]joebloggs@gmail.com[/noparse], it is not possible to register [noparse]joe.bloggs@gmail.com[/noparse]. The mistake is being made by the sender of the email (or the submitter, in the case of website registrations)

Airyfairy12

Something similare happened to me only my account was taken over my somebody else who was as unaware as I was, I logged into an old gmail account that I hardley ever use only to discover it was now somebody elses account in America with the same name as me, every time I logged in there was new emails she was signed up to, she even had a profile picture. I changed my password thinking that would fix the problem, it did for a while until I ended up getting locked out of it for a few weeks and all my associated websites/social medias, I think she might have been able to get into it from a recovery email or something and changed the password, then one day I could get into them again and this other person no longer shared my account. Very strange, I think the people in gmail might have found out and seperated our accounts.

Ave Sodalis

28064212 wrote: »

It's not gmail's mistake. If someone joins with [noparse]joebloggs@gmail.com[/noparse], it is not possible to register [noparse]joe.bloggs@gmail.com[/noparse]. The mistake is being made by the sender of the email (or the submitter, in the case of website registrations)

It seems to happen an awful lot, and with a variety of people. It's never happened with my Outlook address, which I've had since near enough its release in 2007.

Victor

gooner99 wrote: »

Alas with no way of getting through to Gmail I will continue to mark as spam and unsubscribe where possible.

Do not unsubscribe from emails you didn't sign up to. It's a way for spammers to check if your email address is real. Just mark as spam and block.

gooner99

Victor wrote: »

Do not unsubscribe from emails you didn't sign up to. It's a way for spammers to check if your email address is real. Just mark as spam and block.

Only if it's the auto unsubscribe when I use unsubscribe and report spam option. I never bother filling anything in if it redirects me to a website. In future will just report as spam. Thanks for the tip.

gooner99

Thanks all for the replies. It gives a good understanding of whats going on.

The strange one is the PayPal. Surely you need to confirm your account via email when you initially sign up.

Heebie

gooner99 wrote:

Only if it's the auto unsubscribe when I use unsubscribe and report spam option. I never bother filling anything in if it redirects me to a website. In future will just report as spam. Thanks for the tip.

There link in the email is probably encoded to identify your email address if you click on the link. It doesn't really matter if you fill out the form. They still know the email got to you... and see read.

pwurple

Yup, some US person doing the same with me. Bank details, mortgage applications, social security deray, the whole lot emailed to me.

Absolute dope. I got her details and phoned her about it, she had no interest in correcting it. Tempted to start diverting funds to my revolut, but holding off.

28064212

Ave Sodalis wrote: »

It seems to happen an awful lot, and with a variety of people. It's never happened with my Outlook address, which I've had since near enough its release in 2007.

That's because Outlook.com doesn't have this feature. [noparse]joebloggs@outlook.com[/noparse] and [noparse]joe.bloggs@outlook.com[/noparse] are different accounts. This means each individual account receives less "typo" emails. Say you're joebloggs, and someone is trying to reach joe.bloggs72, but mistype it as joe.bloggs or joebloggs. In Gmail, you would receive either mistake, in Outlook you would only receive one. But note that in neither case does the email go to the right person, and in neither case is it the fault of the email service

Also, Outlook.com has substantially less users, and is even less recognised among the kind of people to make typos in email addresses. For lots of people, Gmail and email are synonymous, like Google search and "The Internet", which in itself contributes to the problem: people putting in [noparse]joebloggs@gmail.com[/noparse], when the person they're looking for is [noparse]joe.bloggs@outlook.com[/noparse]

lawred2

gooner99 wrote: »

Hi. For the last few months someone in the US has been using my Gmail address which is simply my first and last names with no full stops or numbers. At first I thought maybe it was that the other person had a full stop in their address and I have read that sometimes Gmail have an issue with delivery with these. The other option is that the other person is using it knowingly as they have a different first name. I find this odd as they order stuff with my Gmail address as well as signing up to newsletters, mailing lists, etc. I tried to contact Google, but haven't found a way to do so. Anyone got experience of this. What are my best options?

believe it or not google ignores dots

do my.email.address@gmail.com is the same as myemailaddress@gmail.com

But that doesn't explain how a conflicting email address was created to begin with

28064212

lawred2 wrote: »

But that doesn't explain how a conflicting email address was created to begin with

It wasn't. It's never been possible on Gmail to set up joe.bloggs when joebloggs already existed.

L1011

I have [relatively common Irish first name][extremely common Irish surname]@gmail.com which I managed to nab very early on

I get ridiculous amounts of stuff for other people that forgot the numbers they had at the end or whatever. Cinema tickets, gig tickets (Fleetwood Mac in Boston, oddly), pre-screening forms for jobs, reminders that an Australian visa was going to expire... One woman cannot understand that I'm not actually her son and keeps sending me random ****e.

gooner99

Yeah. My email address dates all the way back to when you needed an invite (I think). So at the time I thought it was great to get firstnamelastname&gmail.

Ice Storm

I get this all the time. I have a common name and got an early Gmail address which is lastnamefirstname. I've received invoices, medical records, phone bills etc. Mostly from America but occasionally Australia and Germany! I mostly delete unless it looks important and I'll reply to sender.

I do get great entertainment out of being included in an American family's email group and getting invited to various gatherings. I responded to them once to let them know, as I felt bad my namesake might be excluded but the emails continued!

Anyway, it's not a flaw in Gmail, it's just idiots inputting the wrong address. I'd say it's intentional at times, to avoid spam.. it just ends up in my inbox instead of theirs!

lawred2

gooner99 wrote: »

Yeah. My email address dates all the way back to when you needed an invite (I think). So at the time I thought it was great to get firstnamelastname&gmail.

same

Uncle Pierre

28064212 wrote: »

people putting in [noparse]joebloggs@gmail.com[/noparse], when the person they're looking for is [noparse]joe.bloggs@outlook.com[/noparse]

I hear ya. I spoke to somebody not that long ago (probably only about a year) who genuinely believed that @gmail.com could be used in any email address instead of the real domain name, because "Google owns the internet and does all the email anyway".

Still, at least they knew how to send an email. Best (or worst) I've ever had was a time in work, maybe 10 or 12 years ago, when we used to get weekly reports sent in by part-timers who worked from home long before it was a thing like now. Traditional way of them doing it had been by fax, but all had moved over to email by then, except one, who still sent up to 8 or 10 pages of figures and notes by fax each week.

I eventually phoned him and asked if he could send by email instead. He said he'd try, and I gave him the address unclepierre@work.com

The following Monday morning, the fax machine buzzed into life as normal, eight pages spewed out, and scrawled in handwriting on the cover sheet were the words "For the attention of unclepierre@work.com"

True story. Honestly.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

i have an early full name email address as well
i get loads of wrong ones all over the world

i do have fun with repeat offenders

1/ a long email chain about a stag and ski weekend in Aspen , loads of people on it
i asked them to take me off, no one listened -
i then said its a long way for me to go but i will come if you supply the coke and hookers
they took me off then
( after one responded saying there were kids and teenagers on the mail trail - f*ck em, i laughed hard )


2/ Regular ones from a priests secretary in uk, and priests colleagues
the weird thing is the priest has my name and is based in the small town i was also born in

anyway - i got emails from a design company about repainting his rectory ( giggidy)
i told them im not him, and they still sent colour schemes
i mailed them back saying i was skydiving with my boyfriend in Florida,
and a nice candy pink would suit the walls.
i got an email from his secretary the next day to say she took me off and was still laughing


3/ Bank lone approval from BOI to a student for 6 grand - I was so tempted
but i didnt in the end - email them saying great thats my party year sorted.
i got a polite apology

ted1

gooner99 wrote: »

Hi. For the last few months someone in the US has been using my Gmail address which is simply my first and last names with no full stops or numbers. At first I thought maybe it was that the other person had a full stop in their address and I have read that sometimes Gmail have an issue with delivery with these. The other option is that the other person is using it knowingly as they have a different first name. I find this odd as they order stuff with my Gmail address as well as signing up to newsletters, mailing lists, etc. I tried to contact Google, but haven't found a way to do so. Anyone got experience of this. What are my best options?

Full stops are ignored by gmail. You can stick them in anywhere in your address and it’ll still go to you

My gmail is brownfinger@gmail.com*
I keep getting mails for a small company whos email addreess is brownfinger@gmail.com.AU based in Sydney.

Been happening for years and they said its not thier problem,nothing they can do etc

So I started rudely replying to the customers and sending them pictures of cats!
I got a mail from an Embassy in sydney asking them to attend something and I told them to go **** themselves

It was going on for 4/5 years.
Havent gotten one since the Embassy incident.

*its not

KAGY

Same thing happened when I set up a gmail account for my first born. Again. Firstname.Surname@gmail.com.


So many namesakes have used it to sign up for different stuff, forgetting they had a number at the end (i assume). It was slightly interesting for a while, again party's and trips being organised, delivery receipts for a teacher in england, an uber account for someone in the states: I could see all their journeys etc.



But when someone used it to sign up for various dating apps I had to get my daughter to stop using it, I unsubscribed, but the amount of spam that was coming in after was unbelievable


Lesson learned, bought a domain name and hosting package from blacknight, so now everyone in the family has firstname@domain.com