I had this happen before. I use “first initial-last name” at gmail. Person has the same last name as me, not the same first name, and not the same gender either. I got flight itineraries, legal docs, dr stuff. I had found him and told him the issue and he said he’d fix it. I even called the lawyer’s office to tell them. I refused to forward the guy the docs I received, and did the canceling thing. Nothing seemed to take. You know when it finally stopped? When I received a “hey before the reunion we should all play golf and drink” group email.I had a very nice conversation with the guy who had arranged that letting him know I wasn’t his friend, the weekend sounded like a lot of fun, but he should probably tell his friend to stop being an idiot and use the correct email. I suspect the group all gave him a hard enough time where he finally stopped it.
Long ago, my Dad used to send out a yearly marketing mailing to all his customers & business associates to kind of keep him in their minds if they haven't worked with him for a while. They had a headshot of him on them. Which was fine, except that he went 15 years without updating the headshot. It was taken in his early 30s & he was now in his mid 40s
It did NOT look like him anymore. We, his family, tried for years to get him to update it but he was sure it was fine.
Then one year he mentioned to a long time business associate that he had sent out the correspondence for the year earlier that day & his associate giggled and said "Thats Great! I always love it when you send out your high school graduation photo every year!"
New headshots were taken for the next year & every year after.
I would have replied (talking as the person who uses your email) that I will be paying for all the golf and drinks. They have proof because they got a reply from his email.
Once I got 25000 miles from a woman that shares the same name as me. She traveled to overseas but on her way back she booked business class.
She used my email AGAIN for reclaiming miles, but I already have an acc with that email, so I got them instead of her. I guess thats what happened.
I then traveled 4 times (almost) for free around Europe.
The opposite happened to my dad. Someone with the same name managed to get their accounts merged and received all of my Dad’s miles. The airline refused to credit them back to my dad unless he could prove he actually took those flights. Years and years worth of flights…
In the beginning I thought they would take those miles from my account after she complained - I mean, I guess she had complained as it was ridiculous amount she had lost, but nothing ever happened. I’ve also got a silver membership so didn’t have to pay for seats and had priority boarding.
I really hope she got them back, but since it was her mistake it wouldn’t be surprising they did nothing about it.
I had a similar situation a few years back. After some research, I learned that a lawyer in South Carolina and I had the same name. I called his office and left a message asking him to stop giving out my email address. No dice. He finally quit when I started cancelling boat reservations, tennis club memberships, and whatnot.
My dad had a 2 year ban from an airline. He bought a car for my sister, and drove it 12 hours to her, and flew home. It was cheaper to get a round trip and skip the return leg than a one way, so he did....
If you're a reasonable person who's been pushed to the point of canceling flights, you would want to make darn sure the lesson is painful enough to sink in.
This is me, but a plastic surgeon. Her office manager told me to stop forwarding emails to the office. It was a lot of email, but it was only the things I thought looked important.
So I cancelled her 21 day french honeymoon. Outside the refund window.
Not the plane tickets though.
It’s been better since then.
You guys are lucky. I have pretty much every above 40yo homonym from Brazil. One of them uses my email to buy stuff for his store. Can't cancel the account without a Brazilian social security number. I keep telling the support team that I'm not Brazilian. They don't care. Everyday I have a new website to mark as spam. Delisting doesn't help. As a kid I was very proud of the simplicity of my email. I hate it with a passion now. It should be illegal for websites to allow registration without email confirmation.
For sure! It wouldn't be hell without HOAs! With my luck, I'll be president because I HATE being in charge of, well, anything. So, I guess I have that to look forward to.
I have this happening to me too. I’ve tried everything. I’m sick of it.
I love you so hard for canceling the honeymoon.
Why is nuclear the only way to get their attention?
They deserve it.
What I don't understand is do they just not check their emails to notice they're not logged in? I get mad anxiety if I go a week without checking my email and I have push notifications on so I notice all confirmation emails. Like how much money do you have to make to just make payments for a 21 DAY VACATION and never even check the confirmation email.
I was going to suggest maybe there's a pattern there as one of mine is in South Carolina. But they're just one of the many.
South Carolina, New York, South Africa, Australia, Ireland, Texas, Bay Area, Canada, Jamaica... I think that's it but I've honestly lost track.
The times the emails have been from real people I've tried to resolve the situation, not much success though.
I did send a cheap gift off a wedding registry along with a "fix your damned email address!" to one.
I had two different people (I assume, possible same person moved from Texas to Seattle) but I used to get emails from Playstation about someone else's account. I'd get notified their subscription was about to expire, expired, then refilled again. Later I got an email from an insurance company with their homeowner's policy documents and was finally able to get ahold of the person to tell them to stop using my email. I was polite about it as it seemed we have the same name and it wasn't emails for everything, just a couple places that probably made the same typo.
All was quiet for a couple years until late last year I got emails with tax return and retirement account documents for someone else. Contacted the accountant and let them know I wasn't their customer. They apologized and mentioned how concerning the flub was. Then they did it two more times.
Similar situation but with my phone number. Some real-estate agent/businessman of some sort had the same phone number as me except for the last digit. He had handed out business cards that didnt print well and the last digit was apparently ambiguous. After multiple calls, I rang the guy up and he had the audacity to ask me to take messages from his clients for him and to just let him know like I was his secretary. After that, I just started making up the most outlandish shit like he had died, got in trouble with the CCP and gotten deported, quit/sold his practice, ect. Got a few angry calls from him before it stopped for the most part. Still get a few calls a handful of years later though.
I've got a sort of wholesome version of this. I get calls every once in a while from an old woman with a southern accent, apparently my number is one digit off her brother's. The most recent call was just "Oh phooey, I've done it again."
About 5 years after I got my phone number an apartment complex opened with a phone number one digit off from mine, the amount of people blowing up my phone looking for a place to live was insane. I called the apartment multiple asking if they could change their number as it was near 24h that that calls came in and was basically told to piss off. I started to tell people that they were too late and everything was rented already or whatever else random insane reason that I could think of as to why there were no more units available, after about a month the calls stopped I am guessing they either filled the unit, went out of buis or changed the number because I haven't gotten a single call about that place for years.
Hello??? Is this the rat control guy? I'm so glad you called!! They're really getting out of control and I'm desperately trying to rent out this unit next week!!! When the person hangs up you just respond with oh is this the improve group line? Aww shucks.
I had this with a daycare center that gave out my phone number. After months and months, I told someone “sure, we can pick up your kid from school” and all the calls stopped.
I feel bad for the kid, but I tried to tell the parent they had the wrong number.
I once had a middle aged woman call to schedule a doctors appointment, I tried to tell her she'd dialled the wrong number but she repeatedly insisted she'd dialled the right number and rudely demanded that I **had** to give her an appointment.
At that point I asked her when she would like to come in, she gave me a date and time, I said OK, she replied "See, that wasn't so hard, see you in a few days." I signed off with "When you turn up to your doctors and they have no record of your appointment think about the beginning of this call" then I hung up.
I occasionally wonder what was going on in her head to not believe someone when they tell you you've misdialled.
Had a similar thing when a school started calling my number instead of the kid's mom's. I kept getting calls about how he'd been sent to the principal, or gotten into a fight or whatever. I kept telling them that they had the wrong number, but they just kept calling.
Eventually I decided to answer like I WAS his mom and pretended to be furious. I told them that it was the last straw! That I wasn't picking him up today and he'd just have to walk home! And when he got home, he better expect the beating of a lifetime! He'd be lucky to even survive it!
They never called again. Guess they finally found a reason to sort it out...
Back in the dial up internet days a Home Depot opened in our community. Their number is one off from one off from our house landline number. We got several calls a day. One day my brother had his 386 computer hooked up to the dial up doing something, and left it to do what it was doing for a few hours. Everyone in the house knew, but it was fine. When he got home, his task was finished and he disconnected. About five seconds later the phone rang, and he picked it up. Some guy just started shouting at him. All kinds of stuff about how he'd been calling and the line was always busy and all kinds of stuff. He was really mad. He went on and on. When he stopped shouting long enough my brother told him he had been calling a wrong number all day and hung up on him.
Some doctor was using my google voice number and I was getting endless messages asking for narcotic refills.
I reached out to the practice that the patients were talking about but it didn't seem to solve the situation. It looked like it was just a dialing number issue. You call 555-6879 and you flip 555-6789 and get me instead.
This reminds me of my phone line as a teen back home. I had my own line (also for dialup internet, yeah I'm old 😂 ) w/ answering machine that said "hey you've reached cailian13, leave a message!" and every few weeks some little old lady would call for her podiatrist and leave the most graphically detailed messages about her toe. I found it amusing most of the time.
Automatic voice mail: "You have reached 555-6789. If you're calling about a refill on your prescription, please note that we do not offer refills over the phone. You must visit our office in person within the next 24 hours. Have a nice day!"
What I don’t get about this is like, don’t these people need to access the email to find their reservations, etc? And can’t? Or do they just not care about confirmations and details?
The amount of information you can get from someone from a wrongly directed email is terrifying. I have home addresses, yoga studio preferences, and even a resume that states "attention to detail" as a strength.
Mine has an interesting life. She's lived all over South America, and is now spending some time in the heart of London. I don't see the travel/housing arrangements, just the shopping, food, and dating site emails.
A small benefit I've gotten is that years ago she registered her Samsung devices to my email address, so *my* Samsung devices are convinced I spell my first name the Spanish way and live in South America. I guess that's one way to get privacy from data collectors.
Downside is that she registered her Paypal account with my email and her phone number. So I have to keep my Paypal account on an old email address I barely use.
My alter ego is a man with the same name who appears to split his time between London and New Zealand and coordinates a lot of dance performances and plays. He books a lot of hotels and tries to access my booking.com account at least once a week.
He also appears to be homosexual based off of some of the website sign-ups and messages. I used to try to forward his email, but now I just delete everything. If he doesn't give enough of a shit to doublecheck what he types then I certainly don't give enough to forward it.
My alter ego is a very nice historian on the other side of the country. She doesn't give out my e-mail or I hers, but it's the exact same name, just one letter different in the domain name. People just mishear or mistype it or have autocorrect interfering, both are big internet and phone companies. I found her when I got a few history essays on the same day, and then she realised why she sometimes got send natural sciences and medicine related stuff. I'll forward anything history or appointment related, she does the same, no comments. I'll admit to reading articles she gets send, if they're an attached pdf, I can't resist niche history.
Worked at a company big enough to have *three* people with my name.
Like you, I forwarded emails in a civil manner. I think it helps when you know it's not the other person causing the mix up.
You can contact PayPal to tell them someone is using your email address. They'll send an email to your account asking the other person to confirm it's theirs. When there's no reply, PayPal will remove your email address from their account. I recently did this myself.
Yeah I had a guy using my email address for a couple of years. I think he was just lazy about putting an underscore between our first and last names.
Anyways, it stopped after I tried to cancel an engagement ring he had ordered to be custom-designed by a local jeweller.
Why cancel?
"Yeah... about that ring; could I have a miniature dolphin on top? Or a zebra. Whichever you think looks nicer. She's a fool for both dolphins and zebras.
"Cost is not the issue here."
Mine is a professor in France so I would get emails completely in French, which I don't speak and have never been to France. I started replying with crudely Google translated nonsense and various baguette related gifs. Finally stopped.
I have 2, one a realtor in Canada and one a mechanic in North Dakota. Thing is I'm English with a really unusual 3 pronged name - think Maxamillimus Szamic-Bethjner. My gmail is basically that with no spaces. The realtor I finally got after cancelling no end of tennis club and restaurant reservations \*after I'd reached out to him on linkedin\*. We had a friendly jovial convo about it and still gave my email out. I think he may have been an alcoholic. God only knows about the mechanic. His are more sporadic but more important - papers for car purchases, mortgage documents, BIG deliveries of spare parts for his business, enrolment of his kids into schools - hundreds of thousands of dollars and really important shit. How do these people do it?
> Thing is I'm English with a really unusual 3 pronged name - think Maxamillimus Szamic-Bethjner.
We need more Maxamillimus Szamic-Bethjner licence plates in the gift shop.
Me and a dentist. I figured out his email and begged him to stop. I finally told him that I was going to retire soon and that would fill my days signing him up for spam emails. That stopped it.
I have this, I’m in Australia and my email Nemesis is in the USA. I have all his information from account info he’s set up with my email address, including his phone number. I rang him once and he argued with me saying it was His email address and always had been.
My response of “so why am I getting all the emails then and you don’t see them?” Fell on deaf ears.
He’s still using it, and I’m still cancelling his accounts including appliance rentals and car purchases.
I even called the HR Dept at the place he was working and had them coach him through setting up another address to get his pay sips to. It did no good.
i have worked in customer service for a lonnnng time and i understand people are really, really stupid, but this is just an unfathomable amount of stupid. how is it even possible for him to not understand it’s not his email address after all that? my brain hurts.
If you think that’s stupid, I have the dude who’s using my email’s address, phone number, medical history, and social security.
I’ve tried calling him to a) ~~threaten~~ gently suggest he stop using my email, and b) warn him that he needs to be much much more careful with his personal details
My email address is constantly used by a guy in the US. I think people think because it's "like their name", they just assume they own it.
Jarrod. If you're reading (assuming you can), can you get your own email address? Thanks!
I have a common name and have the gmail address. I have people from all over, including Australia, use it for stuff. I cancel accounts, cancel appointments, disconnect services. One guy tried to reset his password about 8 times before he figured he wasn't getting those emails, I guess. Another guy spent all night drafting and trading for his fantasy football league. I got an email for each and every draft and trade. In the morning I wiped out his team. I recently canceled a hotel stay, paid in advance, with a pop-up window reminding me that there was no refund. Oops.
I do sometimes get emails about births and things, and I do get to see pictures of babies and such. I politely respond congratulating them and explaining they used an incorrect email address. Those people are usually nice and understand the problem.
I was somehow looped into an email thread about a New England kids’ soccer team, and after the first couple of messages about picking kids up and who was carpooling, I sent a nice email out to say that I wasn’t part of the group (not even in the same country!) and asked them to remove me. Well, you would have thought I’d challenged them to a naked pillow fight, they were outraged - they didn’t remove me, they just started emailing “who is this person? Why are they here? I don’t appreciate them talking to us”. I guess they eventually worked out that *their* Lucy wasn’t turning up or responding to them and fixed it
Not quite email but still funny. I'm American but spent a couple of years at the ANU in Canberra. My department had it's own specialized library and one day the librarian calls me up asking for my full middle name. I had no problem with this thinking it must be some new system theyre implementing and everybody has to do this. No, it turned out someone using the library had my same first and last name (not that common) and the same middle initial. I had no idea what they were going to do if we'd had the same middle name.
I get this all the time. There are at least 3 people with the same name as me who either don’t know their own email address or don’t care. One of whom is in the same city as me. I have enough information on all of them to steal their identity if I wanted to.
I have weirdly struck up a bit of a friendship with one of them and I know that it’s not her that’s doing it, it’s other people who can’t type properly. I forward on any emails that are definitely for her but for the others I change the passwords on any account they try to open and cancel any and all appointments.
The worst was threatening a hospital with a breach of patient confidentiality to get them to stop emailing me.
Same. I had a person enter my email for their bank account. I got hold of them sent sms and WhatsApp with details. No response.
Later I sent mail to the bank that they are sending confidential information of their client to me. You have to see the frenzy of emails that I got from them from all their internal services about them investigating and correcting.
I've had banking and collection agencies looking for someone with my name (also someone who didn't have my name but still used my email address). It only stopped once I found the financial regulatory agency for the Philippines and started forwarding all the leaked financial information that was being sent to me and pointing out the violation of financial privacy laws. The bank didn't give a shit until regulators were brought in.
I've had that a couple times now too, including someone's job offer letter to an ER surgeon in Oregon and someone else's wage garnishment, and neither party seemed to care at all that I'm getting the wrong stuff.
I had someone use my phone number to get updates on their temu order. I was able to use the link in the text to find her actual email and asked her to fix it cause it's annoying. I can't block them cause they come from randomly generated 5 digit numbers, not a single actual phone number
She didn't.
So the next time I got one I went back in and found her name and delivery address, which was a residence. I wrote and mailed her a physical letter saying FIX THIS SHIT and haven't had an issue since. Pretty sure I scared her. Good. She has terrible taste.
I had someone use my phone number to sign up for EVERYTHING for like a decade. This man gave my phone number to every single person. I got phone calls from his bank, I got phone calls from debt collectors, I got phone calls from his work, I got calls from the VA, I got phone calls from his friends. Eventually, I just started telling people he died. That worked pretty well for a while until I got a phone call from a police department in Mississippi telling me that his daughter had a warrant and they were trying to track her down so I explained the situation to them and they let it go. I was never able to actually get in touch with the guy, but I do know that he is a middle-aged black man who served in the military and does a lot of business in Mississippi. Eventually it stopped but not before 15 years of 2 AM phone calls saying “ay Bobby wuz good mane” or “where Bobby at??” Or “ I need to speak with Robert”
I had the same thing happen for about two years and at one point I got a call from his uncle that his dad had passed away and the funeral was that weekend, I called his uncle back and let him know that it was the wrong number. A couple weeks later I got a message from the uncle that they finally got in touch with him and he had missed the funeral. After that I really haven't gotten many calls for him but it must have been a wake up call.
See, my thinking is that - say I rebook a nail appointment for half an hour later, the nail technician might be able to take another booking for the original time, so I don't waste THEIR time.
Meanwhile the person who booked using my email won't know it's been rescheduled (since the notification will come to me), they rock up at the original time and have to waste their half hour waiting for the appointment.
Not fair to waste the time of innocent third parties!
They'll probably end up Karening out on them either way, so the third party will get it in the neck whichever way you go.
Maybe best to just cancel it.
I have the same problem with my Gmail and my unfortunately-leaked iCloud address. I call the process of resetting their passwords (and for dating sites, putting up a bio that says “this is someone too dumb to set up his own mail address”) Belloqing them.
“As you see, Dr. Jones, there is nothing you possess that I cannot take away.”
I'm waiting for someone to post in TIFU that they have accidentally misspelled their email for years probably and lost interviews, appointments and Starbucks reward.
I have a dude here in Sweden who has almost identical gmail as me. There is like 1 thing different, but i dont know what it is. I gotten like 3 of his mails over the years and each time it has been somewhat important. He ordered computer parts from the same computer store as me so i was a bit confused when they sent me the confirmation on the order.
Lucky me i have the dudes phonenumber from the first time he was wrong so i basically just drop him an sms that he has given the wrong email again.
He thanks me and fixes it.
Well first time he was wrong he had bought train tickets and the confirmation with his ticket number and the tickets got sent to me. I felt bad for him because they were bought and paid for and obviously he wouldnt be able to ride the train, but his cellphone was included in the confirmation. So i called him and sent him his tickets.
He shares my name wich is also the reason he typed the wrong email. As we both use our full names in gmail. So both name and surname.
Well, I am in Sweden as well. Same story, early gmail account. After forwarding a bunch of emails from the same rental car company I asked my counterpart to please change her adress to the correct one. Her response? ”Why would I do that? I’ve gotten all e-mails so far, so it can’t be the wrong one.” 😳😫😡
I'm in Canada but I have numerous people in India that use my email when they set up services. Many Indian companies don't verify e-mail addresses but require them even though most Indians use their phones for notifications. It's been years and it's so frustrating getting marketing emails and account updates from companies on the other side of the planet.
When I can do damage back, I do but a lot of them set up their phones as MFA so I can't always hurt them back.
I cancelled someone's wedding anniversary dinner reservation, upcoming term teaching schedule, and had a FedEx package redirected for pickup at the most inconvenient location I could find. That seemed to fix the problem. (I had nicely attempted to get them to stop using my email address about eight or nine times over the year prior to that, so I figured that drastic action was called for.)
I cancelled the order for his new eyeglasses and using the shipping address on the email sent missionaries from a variety of faiths to his home at 8am Saturday morning for three consecutive weeks.
I got some random emails couldn't figure out who was trying to use my email. Until I got some materials about buying a retirement home in Florida. I got hold of the agent and told her to please remove me from her list as I was not buying a retirement home. She calls me Mr X and starts going on a tirade about wasting her time showing all those houses over the weekend.
My nickname is one of those names that can be male or female and it's part of my email. I replied, this proves my point. I'm female, and I have never been to Florida.
I can only imagine her Pikachu face when I got her reply a few moments later saying she would reach her client later using the number he provided.
I get this too. I know more about two women in America and Canada than I ever needed to know. I know when their kids school trip is next week, what apps their kids play, the loungewear and perfume she just ordered, etc etc.
The worst was a few summers ago she set her kids up on some online gaming thing where you get a notification every time they log in/do something/get a message. I was getting spammed with hundreds of emails a day. I low key hate her.
i got a few mundane ones until eventuality got emails from a school about someones kid.
tried responding telling them that this guy was having them hand out info to a stranger and that he needs to update his email along with a list of the sites that had his name in the emails and actually got a response they had been notified
i got ignored, which i found out when i got a vehicle parts quote and started getting updates about the kid again.
so i ended up sending them an unrelated email along the lines of asking her if they would be interested in joining 'us' in the bedroom.
though i did follow up actually telling them that it was just a way to grab attention and to tell the person to fix it, with the addition of 'though they might actually be interested from what ive seen of the fetish equipment order confirmations and local hotel bookings'
the person using my email has never made that mistake since, so i think it might have worked
Similar issue! I got a bunch of crap until I started getting school ones too. Messaged the teacher to say a parent gave you the wrong email. It stopped for a bit then started up again - I presume the dumbass put the wrong email back in. Messaged the school slightly more annoyed saying please stop emailing me (like, f'real now I know your fucking kids full name, dob, school, teacher, schedule etc).
When it started back up again I looked up the headteacher online and messaged her that there had to be some american version of child safeguarding so please stop sending me this kids info before I look up where to report it. Never had any since.
Similar, my dad signed up our whole family with our first.last name when Gmail first started. Not to an annoying level, but semi regularly will get receipts where someone clearly mistyped their email at the terminal. The other fun one is the medical journal in German (last name is very German).
But I think my favorite was when the volcanos erupted in Europe and it was totally f-ing with flights I got an email about how a trip itinerary had changed. Like a personal email sent to a bunch of people message. I responded that they had a wrong email address. To which they argued with me that internet was expensive and they were on a trip with my parents so just sent out a message for everyone in the group. Wouldn't you think if my parents were on a trip like that I would figure that out? It took telling them that I had seen my parents that morning in the US for them to finally get it. But it was to late, and people were using that email message for replying all for updates the rest of the trip. Thankfully that was only a short lived vacation.
Several years ago, I started getting voice mails from a dude at Disney World who was trying to call his brother to arrange a joint lunch for their families, get together for certain rides, etc. I texted him that he had the wrong number. I called him and told him he had the wrong number. He kept calling me...
Wonder how often he and his brother actually managed to meet up.
Reminds me of that one time I was repeatedly called by the same unknown number. When I eventually answered one of the calls (I was at school before and couldn't answer right away), there was a woman at the other end of the line asking me something about towels?? I don't know what her issue was exactly, but still, I told her that she probably mistyped the number, as I didn't know her and didn't have anything to do with towels. Still didn't stop her to try to reach me every half an hour until I blocked her number. I wonder if she eventually got that towel business sorted out.
Just last week I got the paperwork from a psychiatrist for a student on the other side of the country who has my name. The paperwork was for getting accommodations for ADHD etc. Just blindly emailed to `fullname -at- gmail`...
Three or four pages of PDF talking about what meds he's on, how often he's visited, etc.
I was at a club event with about 40 other people, and the organizer said we could sign up for an event by putting our email addresses on a signup sheet.
A guy I had never seen before, who apparently just came to this one meeting, asked me how to get an email address. He seemed otherwise normal, and not an alien in a human flesh disguise.
After I explained figuring out a unique name to use on Gmail, he started saying things like, “can I have the address ‘sparkyone’? Or maybe my name? What do you mean, someone might be using my name? It’s MY name!”
I had to hush the guy because I was trying to listen to the presentation. I never saw him after that meeting.
I assume he just chose an email address.
I have the same issue going on 20 years with a Hotmail account. I tried all the nice ways to let people know.
I destroy any account I can find. Some even let you change email addresses without validation. The others get a ten minute burner email account.
Yeah I stick with just changing the password and then disabling email notifications. That way they can't sign up for it again. Wild how common this is.
I’ve had a particular email account since early 2000s, and I’m still using it.
About 15 years ago, I started randomly receiving various types of documents for two separate people who have the same first initial and last name as I do. At this point, there are at least five of us with the same first initial and last name and almost all of them have entered my email into something and I get it.
Every chance I get, I either unsubscribe or if it’s something I am able to reply to, I inform them that I’m not the person they’re looking for and please contact that person to get the correct email address. But I’ve received documents for purchasing a house, flight information, family, photos, from around the country, up into Canada, and somewhat recently a bunch of stuff from Australia.
Thankfully, most of the time when I email back they are apologetic or at least get it changed. And if it’s got sensitive information, I immediately delete it cause I don’t need that stuff.
But I do find it quite annoying because at no point have they ever owned this email, it’s been mine all along. And I’m sorry I got it first. but it’s still mine and I’m not giving it up.
I've seen examples of this with .co.uk Vs .com in a previous job.
In the UK we use both to similar degrees so it's easy for someone to get muddled, or someone to hear it wrong too.
I receive quite a few emails intended for other people with the same first and last name as me. It is most likely that the sender got the intended recipient's email address wrong. I reach out to the sender and the intended recipient (if I can figure the email address out) and let them know of the mistake.
When I had to provide an email address for communication while renting a storage unit, I patiently and slowly spelled out the email address, as I had already seen that this guy was a hunt-n-peck typer.
When he handed me the printed confirmation, I told him my email address was wrong (in 3 different ways) and he defensively snapped that it was what I had told him. Dude, no it wasn't. Not even close. I spelled it out again, and this time he read it back to me - still wrong. I told him which letter needed to be corrected - he changed the wrong letter.
At this point I grabbed the Sharpie off the desk, flipped the incorrect confirmation receipt over, and wrote it in large friendly letters across the page.
I can only imagine the number of times this happens across so many offices and people don't catch it, or bother to correct when they do.
None of them have the same first name. Oddly, someone on fb once reached out to me because we did share the same first and last name, but hers was by marriage.
I try and be polite about it, saying they should reach out to the person by another means to verify. Unless I get spammed and there's no unsubscribe option. Then I say I'll report it as spam if they don't change/remove it.
Exact same sitch. I figured out her middle initial was missing (by asking some of the people who were emailing me) so I started forwarding to her. She kept claiming it wasn’t her fault but girl- you are doing this to yourself! The best was when she set up credit monitoring and emailed the username and password to herself (me).
She’s lucky I’m a good person.
My mom kept misspelling my brother's email for years, despite us reminding her over and over that was the wrong address. It just kept happening each time she started a new thread or wanted to add him to an existing one. Or we'd have threads with both the real bro and the fake bro because she'd just respond and move on. Some random stranger has seen our family xmas lists, been invited to weddings, bachelor trips, and other gatherings. I'm surprised he never showed up! I'm hoping someone who lives closer to mom has deleted it from her contacts, but knowing her, he's probably going to get our xmas lists again later this year.
There’s a guy in the UK who has the same name as me, but with a different middle name, and he is forever giving out my gmail address instead of his own (which I assume has an initial or number or something in it). I regularly get his e-receipts from places he’s bought things online, emails from his family and friends trying to reach him to confirm get-togethers, etc. I just ignore the receipts. When his family or friends email I reply and tell them I live in Canada and they have the wrong email address.
(I keep a close eye on my bank accounts and have not been the victim of someone using my identity to buy stuff. All my transactions are accounted for.)
Yeah after all this time it's pretty clear that no one is trying to get into my sensitive accounts. I've got 2F where I can and have never had financial accounts tampered with, but they pretty much all have username logins that aren't my email address. It's when the email is the username that they try to get into stuff thinking it's theirs. I don't even remember how long ago I set up my Microsoft account but they were convinced if they hit the password reset enough times they'd get the email eventually. That happened quite recently and I changed my account photo to a pic that says NOT YOURS and it stopped.
Just a matter of time before something else comes up though.
I share the same name as a therapist within the same state. I started getting emails for therapy referrals, which detailed pretty personal emotional information of potential new clients. After a few were sent to me, I replied to one telling them that I was not the therapist and they should not be sending people’s personal information over email to me. I didn’t get any response and continued to get therapy referrals.
This made me increasingly uncomfortable, so I sent another email stating it was a HIPAA violation if they continued to email me referrals for therapy with personal information since I was not the therapist they were trying to reach. The emails stopped IMMEDIATELY after sending that email reply, so I assumed they finally got the message.
I have two gmail addresses that I created when it was invite only. One has a period separating first and last name. Some schmuck in Kansas thinks it is his address. I have replied to probably 30 emails asking the person to let him know this isn’t his email. He doesn’t get it. The other is sort of a joke email with a nickname and I get emails in Spanish from multiple people in Central America using it to sign up for phone service etc.
Hahaha This happened to me too and it’s by different people that has the same name as mine. One time I got someone who ordered a food delivery. I got their number and whatapps them that they are using my email. I even got their home address.
One time it was for university applications or something. There were few from banks. Sometime I email back saying I’m not the person that they emailed.
And yes! I got notification that someone tried to reset my password every other day. Just got one today too.
I’m happy that I don’t have to put numbers or a dot my email but ehhhhh, such an inconvenient!
I had someone setup a roblox account under my Gmail. I kept getting updates and emails and I just got bored one day and took it over. Like, I don't even know how that happens.
But the emails stopped.
I have a twin on the East Coast. I know her address, where she works, a ton about a friend of hers who goes on long vacations (I'm on that friends email list for blast trip updates).
She is just about my age and also disabled (as am I) and keeps missing deadlines for filing paperwork. It used to freak me out because I'd call up my disability management company and be like "what is this about \[xxx\] paperwork" and they'd have no idea how another disability claim was opened in my name (I learned to have them immediately check ssn). At this point I DO know the last 4 of her social, and her most recent address. So now if she gets really close to her deadline I call the company and tell them she's not getting the emails and they have to call her or her medical team. I don't know if it helps. I worry about this mystery dopple ganger and hope she's doing ok.
She has horrible credit. Like, I've never seen credit this bad. I feel horrible for her, her life seems really hard. She gets turned down for like...really minor lines of credit.
Edit: I've tried to get her to understand; she goes through periods of remembering and then does a blast of signing me up for {Important life stuff} emails. I do my best to make sure her carers know.
I've dealt with this for about a year in the early days of Gmail. There is a dude with a similar name in Canada. Sites weren't as diligent about confirming you were actually the legit user of the email used in the account creation process. He kept signing up for things using my initial.sharedLastname gmail account. And it isn't anywhere near a common lastname. It is a name that Google goes "wtf are you on about mate?" when you search it.
I've cancelled orders for expensive cookware Rejected attempts to setup accounts for so many random sites. I know I've caused headaches on more than one vacation for the guy because I've waited until late at night the day before to cancel hotel reservations. I changed the password on the account for a ski resort and cancelled their ski lift tickets.
Dude was using the email to setup lunch dates. I'd reschedule due to "last minute meetings".
What finally got him to stop was a friend or relative of his sent a picture of her kids on a swing with "for your collection" I responded with "And what makes you think I collect random photos of other people's kids"
I guess that freaked her out enough to raise hell at him because that was the last time my email was used.
This made me laugh because I’m also in this situation. My husband grabbed original gmail accounts 15 years ago for the whole family that are just our names with no other letters or symbols. My kids were just babies at the time. Somewhere there is at least one person, maybe more, with my exact name who is constantly scheduling dentist appointments and swimming lessons etc for her and her children using my email account. It drives me bonkers. They don’t do it with anything important enough to mess with sadly, but I’ve contacted several businesses to have my email removed from their system.
So there’s at least three people with my name.
I’m very careful to stress the dot au at the end of my email address, which is basically just my name. My new vet accidentally missed it and sent my invoice to my email dot com.
I came to find out, through the vet nurse, that the person with my name in Ireland has been getting a bunch of email she thought belonged to me. I was confused, as I definitely wasn’t missing any airline tickets and the things listed, just the vet clinic’s invoice, but apologised to her for the inconvenience and we agreed to forward things on etc.
A few months later, I got the third persons passport photos, from a location quite near to me. The penny dropped, they were the culprit the entire time. Unfortunately for them, I have no idea what their actual email address might be, so they’re going to keep missing out on the emails going to both me and the person with my name in Ireland. Wonder if they ever got their passport.
I actually am dealing with the same issue myself. The person who has been using my email for years used to live in the Philippines and now lives in Australia. I live in the US and have had my email since 2004. After years of trying to make her stop using my email address, I've decided to get even. I've changed her passwords to some of her accounts, I've written embarrassing reviews of stuff she's bought from online stores using my email, and I've even shared her photo to customer service reps when trying to unsubscribe my email to her accounts. I am normally not this mean and I've very nicely tried to ask her to stop using my email (I found her on social media years ago), but she hasn't soo.....
Similar to OP, I have a early adopter gmail account. flast at gmail.
Many different folks would give it out.
Worst one was when I started getting etsy sales and purchase confirmations. I don't have an etsy store. I tracked the person done on etsy and used the chat function to inform them. Just a straight forward: "Hey if you are wondering where your etsy confirmation emails are, you put in the wrong email address. I'm getting the messages."
The person blasted me, hitting me with profanities and insults.
I still tried to talk to them and convince them, but they just escalated their abuse.
So I did a password reset, looked over their account. Changed their name to "Doesnt know their own email address"
They tried to go nuclear, but well I've been around for a while. OK, I'm old. It just rolled off my back. So I did another reset and deleted the account. "Are you sure? There is no way to restore your account after this."
Y
They had several pending sales and purchases in their queue. All gone.
I’m currently going through a phase of getting emails from Navy Federal telling me payments have been set up for Tonya Jones, I’m not Tonya and not a Jones I get the notifications for low balance as well oh I’m in England too we don’t have a Navy Federal credit union…
A few years back I was mistaken for a dairy farmer so I was getting purchase emails from supermarkets, signed up to their forums and the like, I emailed them as I figured it was some farmers livelihood got completely blanked for a good year so I logged into the Tesco farmers portal and made a post saying Asda were paying more per pint than Tesco shortly after I stopped getting emails pertaining to milk.
I have 3-4 people with my name trying to use my email address. Someone in Australia, someone in the UK that owns a butcher shop, an idiot in Connecticut who signs up for a lot of dating sites and porn, and some idiot lady in Minnesota who think it's her husband's. I cancel his hotel and rental cars all the time.
One guy in particular (a fabulously tacky elderly gay man who moved to FL) was getting a LOT of super important docs so I emailed his partner who was CCed. He emailed me and was very apologetic and showed me that he changed his email address - BUT did so by including his middle initial which resulted in just doubling up a letter. So it looks like a typo.
I still get a lot of his email but less than before. Could never get a hold of anyone else.
I have a cousin that I’ve never met in person. She lives in California, I live in Pennsylvania. We both have the same last name and first initials. She was signing up for stuff using my email address. I managed to find out how to contact her and let her know I was getting her bank statements and other things. Kind of interestingly weird.
Same thing has been happening to me. I've had my addy since the beta days of Gmail when you needed an invite.
Initially I contacted people to let them know they were emailing the wrong person. Then I started simply deleting and ignoring. When that didn't work, I started reporting as spam. Now I'm changing passwords, then blocking.
How hard is it to learn your own damn email address?!
Yeah. Same. My Gmail is first.last and there is someone who has firstlast as hers. She signs up for radio contests, marketing emails, sends her alumni stuff my way, has her walmart and HSN accounts coming to the email. After an email reach out to her that her emails were coming to my email, she marked my personal email as spam and harassing her way back in 2016. So...I unsubsribe to everything, click "this isn't me" for password resets, mark stuff as spam and create general chaos. Used her gas rewards, coupon codes and others that are emailed. Since she takes the time to go back and resubscribe to all this nonsense every time I unsubscribe 🙄🤔
New York City and Mississippi for my doppelgängers.
I bet New York me was surprised when he got to his Open Table reservation on Broadway after the show and his table was cancelled!
My Mississippi doppelgänger buys lots of oil filters and brake pads.
I had the same thing going on for YEARS and I couldn't figure out how to stop it. My e-mail address is my first initial, last name, and abbreviation for my city. Well another person with the same first initial, last name and city apparently got confused. I had this e-mail for 20+ years when it started happening. The worst was when she signed up for [match.com](http://match.com) and I was getting a bunch of thirsty dudes in my e-mail.
Eventually I got an e-mail from her kid's teacher wanting to setup a meeting to talk about their behavior. I responded to that and explained the situation begging the teacher to please somehow get through to this lady that it wasn't her e-mail address. It finally stopped after that.
I’ve been dealing with the same thing since 2005. I know so much about this muppet. I’ve locked her out of her T-Mobile account so many times. I’ve messaged the other board members at her work to tell them that this confidential info has been sent to the wrong place because of her. I’ve blocked so many businesses. She recently retired and I got the opportunity set up an account to manage her pension. I did make an international phone call that time to tell them to tell her she’s done it again. But after 19 years of her annoying me and making apparently no effort to sort it out, she’s lucky I gave a shit.
I have the same thing going on. I recently had one of their friends send me a dropbox link to their wedding photos. I thought finally, I can get in contact with this woman and have her stop... No, she's still signing up to shit with my email.
So I deleted her RAID: Shadow Legends account.
I had this happen before. I use “first initial-last name” at gmail. Person has the same last name as me, not the same first name, and not the same gender either. I got flight itineraries, legal docs, dr stuff. I had found him and told him the issue and he said he’d fix it. I even called the lawyer’s office to tell them. I refused to forward the guy the docs I received, and did the canceling thing. Nothing seemed to take. You know when it finally stopped? When I received a “hey before the reunion we should all play golf and drink” group email.I had a very nice conversation with the guy who had arranged that letting him know I wasn’t his friend, the weekend sounded like a lot of fun, but he should probably tell his friend to stop being an idiot and use the correct email. I suspect the group all gave him a hard enough time where he finally stopped it.
Public humiliation is the best way.
Long ago, my Dad used to send out a yearly marketing mailing to all his customers & business associates to kind of keep him in their minds if they haven't worked with him for a while. They had a headshot of him on them. Which was fine, except that he went 15 years without updating the headshot. It was taken in his early 30s & he was now in his mid 40s It did NOT look like him anymore. We, his family, tried for years to get him to update it but he was sure it was fine. Then one year he mentioned to a long time business associate that he had sent out the correspondence for the year earlier that day & his associate giggled and said "Thats Great! I always love it when you send out your high school graduation photo every year!" New headshots were taken for the next year & every year after.
I would have replied (talking as the person who uses your email) that I will be paying for all the golf and drinks. They have proof because they got a reply from his email.
Dammit I should’ve thought of that.
Once I got 25000 miles from a woman that shares the same name as me. She traveled to overseas but on her way back she booked business class. She used my email AGAIN for reclaiming miles, but I already have an acc with that email, so I got them instead of her. I guess thats what happened. I then traveled 4 times (almost) for free around Europe.
Well that's a much better score than Starbucks
Comparison is the thief of joy. Enjoy your macadamia whatever.
This made me laugh out loud
The opposite happened to my dad. Someone with the same name managed to get their accounts merged and received all of my Dad’s miles. The airline refused to credit them back to my dad unless he could prove he actually took those flights. Years and years worth of flights…
In the beginning I thought they would take those miles from my account after she complained - I mean, I guess she had complained as it was ridiculous amount she had lost, but nothing ever happened. I’ve also got a silver membership so didn’t have to pay for seats and had priority boarding. I really hope she got them back, but since it was her mistake it wouldn’t be surprising they did nothing about it.
Your dad should have just opened a new account and then asked to merge it with the other account.
I had a similar situation a few years back. After some research, I learned that a lawyer in South Carolina and I had the same name. I called his office and left a message asking him to stop giving out my email address. No dice. He finally quit when I started cancelling boat reservations, tennis club memberships, and whatnot.
It happened to me so many times. Finally I cancelled their outbound flight lol
Leave the outbound flight alone. Cancel the return flight - after they've left.
Reschedule it sooner, so they miss it, still owe for it, and can't rebook.
aaand the real satan just showed up, haha
My dad had a 2 year ban from an airline. He bought a car for my sister, and drove it 12 hours to her, and flew home. It was cheaper to get a round trip and skip the return leg than a one way, so he did....
Calm down Satan! :)
If you're a reasonable person who's been pushed to the point of canceling flights, you would want to make darn sure the lesson is painful enough to sink in.
This is me, but a plastic surgeon. Her office manager told me to stop forwarding emails to the office. It was a lot of email, but it was only the things I thought looked important. So I cancelled her 21 day french honeymoon. Outside the refund window. Not the plane tickets though. It’s been better since then.
You guys are lucky. I have pretty much every above 40yo homonym from Brazil. One of them uses my email to buy stuff for his store. Can't cancel the account without a Brazilian social security number. I keep telling the support team that I'm not Brazilian. They don't care. Everyday I have a new website to mark as spam. Delisting doesn't help. As a kid I was very proud of the simplicity of my email. I hate it with a passion now. It should be illegal for websites to allow registration without email confirmation.
I too am proud of my simple gmail address. I always try to get the same username on new platforms, because the simplicity is a badge of honor.
You. I like you. This story has me full of petty happiness. You’re solid gold, I’ll see you in hell.
You may see them in hell, but they've already agreed to save me the seat immediately next to them.
Can't we agree we'll all live in the same neighborhood in hell?
I've got a neighbourhood sorted out for us all, Satan owes me one so he's dedicated a nice fancy ass neighbourhood, first come first serve! Lol
That should work. I mean, it IS hell, so HOA's are a given.
For sure! It wouldn't be hell without HOAs! With my luck, I'll be president because I HATE being in charge of, well, anything. So, I guess I have that to look forward to.
I look forward to being subjected to your benevolent leadership of our Hell HOA
I have this happening to me too. I’ve tried everything. I’m sick of it. I love you so hard for canceling the honeymoon. Why is nuclear the only way to get their attention? They deserve it.
What I don't understand is do they just not check their emails to notice they're not logged in? I get mad anxiety if I go a week without checking my email and I have push notifications on so I notice all confirmation emails. Like how much money do you have to make to just make payments for a 21 DAY VACATION and never even check the confirmation email.
[удалено]
Why would you share your email online like this….
Uno reverse it's someone they hate
Yeah, if that is your real email. Please be ready for a lot of hassle from random redditors 🙈
This person is in South Carolina as well, if the company and college emails are any indication!
I was going to suggest maybe there's a pattern there as one of mine is in South Carolina. But they're just one of the many. South Carolina, New York, South Africa, Australia, Ireland, Texas, Bay Area, Canada, Jamaica... I think that's it but I've honestly lost track. The times the emails have been from real people I've tried to resolve the situation, not much success though. I did send a cheap gift off a wedding registry along with a "fix your damned email address!" to one.
I had two different people (I assume, possible same person moved from Texas to Seattle) but I used to get emails from Playstation about someone else's account. I'd get notified their subscription was about to expire, expired, then refilled again. Later I got an email from an insurance company with their homeowner's policy documents and was finally able to get ahold of the person to tell them to stop using my email. I was polite about it as it seemed we have the same name and it wasn't emails for everything, just a couple places that probably made the same typo. All was quiet for a couple years until late last year I got emails with tax return and retirement account documents for someone else. Contacted the accountant and let them know I wasn't their customer. They apologized and mentioned how concerning the flub was. Then they did it two more times.
I cannot understand why someone wouldn't fix this problem ASAP. Are they so short-sighted that they don't think there will be consequences?
You'd be surprised at how dumb some people are.
I'm generally surprised when people aren't dumb.
Fair assessment.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin
Similar situation but with my phone number. Some real-estate agent/businessman of some sort had the same phone number as me except for the last digit. He had handed out business cards that didnt print well and the last digit was apparently ambiguous. After multiple calls, I rang the guy up and he had the audacity to ask me to take messages from his clients for him and to just let him know like I was his secretary. After that, I just started making up the most outlandish shit like he had died, got in trouble with the CCP and gotten deported, quit/sold his practice, ect. Got a few angry calls from him before it stopped for the most part. Still get a few calls a handful of years later though.
I've got a sort of wholesome version of this. I get calls every once in a while from an old woman with a southern accent, apparently my number is one digit off her brother's. The most recent call was just "Oh phooey, I've done it again."
That is kind of adorable.
I want this to end in her inviting you to Christmas dinner ❤️
That's my favorite Brandy Steers song.
Isnt that how you get invited to thanksgiving or something?
Yep. Bad print, he could have gotten them replaced free from most printers.
He probably chose some stupid font that made it hard to read.
About 5 years after I got my phone number an apartment complex opened with a phone number one digit off from mine, the amount of people blowing up my phone looking for a place to live was insane. I called the apartment multiple asking if they could change their number as it was near 24h that that calls came in and was basically told to piss off. I started to tell people that they were too late and everything was rented already or whatever else random insane reason that I could think of as to why there were no more units available, after about a month the calls stopped I am guessing they either filled the unit, went out of buis or changed the number because I haven't gotten a single call about that place for years.
Hello??? Is this the rat control guy? I'm so glad you called!! They're really getting out of control and I'm desperately trying to rent out this unit next week!!! When the person hangs up you just respond with oh is this the improve group line? Aww shucks.
I had this with a daycare center that gave out my phone number. After months and months, I told someone “sure, we can pick up your kid from school” and all the calls stopped. I feel bad for the kid, but I tried to tell the parent they had the wrong number.
I once had a middle aged woman call to schedule a doctors appointment, I tried to tell her she'd dialled the wrong number but she repeatedly insisted she'd dialled the right number and rudely demanded that I **had** to give her an appointment. At that point I asked her when she would like to come in, she gave me a date and time, I said OK, she replied "See, that wasn't so hard, see you in a few days." I signed off with "When you turn up to your doctors and they have no record of your appointment think about the beginning of this call" then I hung up. I occasionally wonder what was going on in her head to not believe someone when they tell you you've misdialled.
Had a similar thing when a school started calling my number instead of the kid's mom's. I kept getting calls about how he'd been sent to the principal, or gotten into a fight or whatever. I kept telling them that they had the wrong number, but they just kept calling. Eventually I decided to answer like I WAS his mom and pretended to be furious. I told them that it was the last straw! That I wasn't picking him up today and he'd just have to walk home! And when he got home, he better expect the beating of a lifetime! He'd be lucky to even survive it! They never called again. Guess they finally found a reason to sort it out...
Back in the dial up internet days a Home Depot opened in our community. Their number is one off from one off from our house landline number. We got several calls a day. One day my brother had his 386 computer hooked up to the dial up doing something, and left it to do what it was doing for a few hours. Everyone in the house knew, but it was fine. When he got home, his task was finished and he disconnected. About five seconds later the phone rang, and he picked it up. Some guy just started shouting at him. All kinds of stuff about how he'd been calling and the line was always busy and all kinds of stuff. He was really mad. He went on and on. When he stopped shouting long enough my brother told him he had been calling a wrong number all day and hung up on him.
Some doctor was using my google voice number and I was getting endless messages asking for narcotic refills. I reached out to the practice that the patients were talking about but it didn't seem to solve the situation. It looked like it was just a dialing number issue. You call 555-6879 and you flip 555-6789 and get me instead.
This reminds me of my phone line as a teen back home. I had my own line (also for dialup internet, yeah I'm old 😂 ) w/ answering machine that said "hey you've reached cailian13, leave a message!" and every few weeks some little old lady would call for her podiatrist and leave the most graphically detailed messages about her toe. I found it amusing most of the time.
Automatic voice mail: "You have reached 555-6789. If you're calling about a refill on your prescription, please note that we do not offer refills over the phone. You must visit our office in person within the next 24 hours. Have a nice day!"
[удалено]
What I don’t get about this is like, don’t these people need to access the email to find their reservations, etc? And can’t? Or do they just not care about confirmations and details?
The amount of information you can get from someone from a wrongly directed email is terrifying. I have home addresses, yoga studio preferences, and even a resume that states "attention to detail" as a strength.
Mine has an interesting life. She's lived all over South America, and is now spending some time in the heart of London. I don't see the travel/housing arrangements, just the shopping, food, and dating site emails. A small benefit I've gotten is that years ago she registered her Samsung devices to my email address, so *my* Samsung devices are convinced I spell my first name the Spanish way and live in South America. I guess that's one way to get privacy from data collectors. Downside is that she registered her Paypal account with my email and her phone number. So I have to keep my Paypal account on an old email address I barely use.
My alter ego is a man with the same name who appears to split his time between London and New Zealand and coordinates a lot of dance performances and plays. He books a lot of hotels and tries to access my booking.com account at least once a week. He also appears to be homosexual based off of some of the website sign-ups and messages. I used to try to forward his email, but now I just delete everything. If he doesn't give enough of a shit to doublecheck what he types then I certainly don't give enough to forward it.
My alter ego is a very nice historian on the other side of the country. She doesn't give out my e-mail or I hers, but it's the exact same name, just one letter different in the domain name. People just mishear or mistype it or have autocorrect interfering, both are big internet and phone companies. I found her when I got a few history essays on the same day, and then she realised why she sometimes got send natural sciences and medicine related stuff. I'll forward anything history or appointment related, she does the same, no comments. I'll admit to reading articles she gets send, if they're an attached pdf, I can't resist niche history.
Worked at a company big enough to have *three* people with my name. Like you, I forwarded emails in a civil manner. I think it helps when you know it's not the other person causing the mix up.
You can contact PayPal to tell them someone is using your email address. They'll send an email to your account asking the other person to confirm it's theirs. When there's no reply, PayPal will remove your email address from their account. I recently did this myself.
Thanks, I sent a message to their customer support just now. I hope it works. It would be nice to get that cleared up.
Yeah I had a guy using my email address for a couple of years. I think he was just lazy about putting an underscore between our first and last names. Anyways, it stopped after I tried to cancel an engagement ring he had ordered to be custom-designed by a local jeweller.
Why cancel? "Yeah... about that ring; could I have a miniature dolphin on top? Or a zebra. Whichever you think looks nicer. She's a fool for both dolphins and zebras. "Cost is not the issue here."
you made me laugh. thank you stranger.
Mine is a professor in France so I would get emails completely in French, which I don't speak and have never been to France. I started replying with crudely Google translated nonsense and various baguette related gifs. Finally stopped.
"Quelle horror! Anozer baguette gif!
Nothing changes until something becomes too painful to continue.
I have 2, one a realtor in Canada and one a mechanic in North Dakota. Thing is I'm English with a really unusual 3 pronged name - think Maxamillimus Szamic-Bethjner. My gmail is basically that with no spaces. The realtor I finally got after cancelling no end of tennis club and restaurant reservations \*after I'd reached out to him on linkedin\*. We had a friendly jovial convo about it and still gave my email out. I think he may have been an alcoholic. God only knows about the mechanic. His are more sporadic but more important - papers for car purchases, mortgage documents, BIG deliveries of spare parts for his business, enrolment of his kids into schools - hundreds of thousands of dollars and really important shit. How do these people do it?
> Thing is I'm English with a really unusual 3 pronged name - think Maxamillimus Szamic-Bethjner. We need more Maxamillimus Szamic-Bethjner licence plates in the gift shop.
Me and a dentist. I figured out his email and begged him to stop. I finally told him that I was going to retire soon and that would fill my days signing him up for spam emails. That stopped it.
Don't cancel, upgrade them.
If they are top tier, downgrade to Economy, at the back of the plane far, far from the exit doors
Right beside the toilets
Cancel is free, upgrade needs payment info.
I have this, I’m in Australia and my email Nemesis is in the USA. I have all his information from account info he’s set up with my email address, including his phone number. I rang him once and he argued with me saying it was His email address and always had been. My response of “so why am I getting all the emails then and you don’t see them?” Fell on deaf ears. He’s still using it, and I’m still cancelling his accounts including appliance rentals and car purchases. I even called the HR Dept at the place he was working and had them coach him through setting up another address to get his pay sips to. It did no good.
Reply to the HR emails with a resignation letter.
Pretty sure he doesn’t even work there any more. Besides, HR never sent him any emails, just the company doing the background check for the job.
Reply with, "Your background check won't cover anything I did in South Africa in the summer of 1998, will it?"
It takes a REAL MAN to sexually harass HR.
I laughed way too hard at this. Thank you.
I roll a nat 20 on the charisma check. Promoted, and get my own private office
i have worked in customer service for a lonnnng time and i understand people are really, really stupid, but this is just an unfathomable amount of stupid. how is it even possible for him to not understand it’s not his email address after all that? my brain hurts.
If you think that’s stupid, I have the dude who’s using my email’s address, phone number, medical history, and social security. I’ve tried calling him to a) ~~threaten~~ gently suggest he stop using my email, and b) warn him that he needs to be much much more careful with his personal details
Stupid is as stupid does Stupid and stubborn is the actual deadly combo
My email address is constantly used by a guy in the US. I think people think because it's "like their name", they just assume they own it. Jarrod. If you're reading (assuming you can), can you get your own email address? Thanks!
I have a common name and have the gmail address. I have people from all over, including Australia, use it for stuff. I cancel accounts, cancel appointments, disconnect services. One guy tried to reset his password about 8 times before he figured he wasn't getting those emails, I guess. Another guy spent all night drafting and trading for his fantasy football league. I got an email for each and every draft and trade. In the morning I wiped out his team. I recently canceled a hotel stay, paid in advance, with a pop-up window reminding me that there was no refund. Oops. I do sometimes get emails about births and things, and I do get to see pictures of babies and such. I politely respond congratulating them and explaining they used an incorrect email address. Those people are usually nice and understand the problem.
I was somehow looped into an email thread about a New England kids’ soccer team, and after the first couple of messages about picking kids up and who was carpooling, I sent a nice email out to say that I wasn’t part of the group (not even in the same country!) and asked them to remove me. Well, you would have thought I’d challenged them to a naked pillow fight, they were outraged - they didn’t remove me, they just started emailing “who is this person? Why are they here? I don’t appreciate them talking to us”. I guess they eventually worked out that *their* Lucy wasn’t turning up or responding to them and fixed it
That's when you just start volunteering lucy for things. Take all the kids on a road trip to an away game? sure, glad to!
Email resignation letters and talk shit to HR. Honestly, how dense can you be? If you don't have the password, it isnt yours.
Cancel his phone plan.
Not quite email but still funny. I'm American but spent a couple of years at the ANU in Canberra. My department had it's own specialized library and one day the librarian calls me up asking for my full middle name. I had no problem with this thinking it must be some new system theyre implementing and everybody has to do this. No, it turned out someone using the library had my same first and last name (not that common) and the same middle initial. I had no idea what they were going to do if we'd had the same middle name.
I get this all the time. There are at least 3 people with the same name as me who either don’t know their own email address or don’t care. One of whom is in the same city as me. I have enough information on all of them to steal their identity if I wanted to. I have weirdly struck up a bit of a friendship with one of them and I know that it’s not her that’s doing it, it’s other people who can’t type properly. I forward on any emails that are definitely for her but for the others I change the passwords on any account they try to open and cancel any and all appointments. The worst was threatening a hospital with a breach of patient confidentiality to get them to stop emailing me.
Same. I had a person enter my email for their bank account. I got hold of them sent sms and WhatsApp with details. No response. Later I sent mail to the bank that they are sending confidential information of their client to me. You have to see the frenzy of emails that I got from them from all their internal services about them investigating and correcting.
[удалено]
I've had banking and collection agencies looking for someone with my name (also someone who didn't have my name but still used my email address). It only stopped once I found the financial regulatory agency for the Philippines and started forwarding all the leaked financial information that was being sent to me and pointing out the violation of financial privacy laws. The bank didn't give a shit until regulators were brought in.
I've had that a couple times now too, including someone's job offer letter to an ER surgeon in Oregon and someone else's wage garnishment, and neither party seemed to care at all that I'm getting the wrong stuff.
Yeah, I forward my email-doppelganger all of her banking emails, the rest go to spam. She forgot to add the 2 at the end of her email address. Sigh.
I had someone use my phone number to get updates on their temu order. I was able to use the link in the text to find her actual email and asked her to fix it cause it's annoying. I can't block them cause they come from randomly generated 5 digit numbers, not a single actual phone number She didn't. So the next time I got one I went back in and found her name and delivery address, which was a residence. I wrote and mailed her a physical letter saying FIX THIS SHIT and haven't had an issue since. Pretty sure I scared her. Good. She has terrible taste.
I had someone use my phone number to sign up for EVERYTHING for like a decade. This man gave my phone number to every single person. I got phone calls from his bank, I got phone calls from debt collectors, I got phone calls from his work, I got calls from the VA, I got phone calls from his friends. Eventually, I just started telling people he died. That worked pretty well for a while until I got a phone call from a police department in Mississippi telling me that his daughter had a warrant and they were trying to track her down so I explained the situation to them and they let it go. I was never able to actually get in touch with the guy, but I do know that he is a middle-aged black man who served in the military and does a lot of business in Mississippi. Eventually it stopped but not before 15 years of 2 AM phone calls saying “ay Bobby wuz good mane” or “where Bobby at??” Or “ I need to speak with Robert”
I had the same thing happen for about two years and at one point I got a call from his uncle that his dad had passed away and the funeral was that weekend, I called his uncle back and let him know that it was the wrong number. A couple weeks later I got a message from the uncle that they finally got in touch with him and he had missed the funeral. After that I really haven't gotten many calls for him but it must have been a wake up call.
The uncle called you with an update. You must have been fully invested!
I think these people are calling my wife’s phone now. 😂
There's no need to write that she has terrible taste. You already told us that when you mentioned 'Temu order'...
I told her as much in both the email and letter lol I don't pull punches
It's amazing how people can be so stupid. I like rescheduling things for half an hour later...
Later? No.... earlier.
See, my thinking is that - say I rebook a nail appointment for half an hour later, the nail technician might be able to take another booking for the original time, so I don't waste THEIR time. Meanwhile the person who booked using my email won't know it's been rescheduled (since the notification will come to me), they rock up at the original time and have to waste their half hour waiting for the appointment. Not fair to waste the time of innocent third parties!
That's very carefully considered and thoughtful.
Lawful evil!!
They'll probably end up Karening out on them either way, so the third party will get it in the neck whichever way you go. Maybe best to just cancel it.
I have the same problem with my Gmail and my unfortunately-leaked iCloud address. I call the process of resetting their passwords (and for dating sites, putting up a bio that says “this is someone too dumb to set up his own mail address”) Belloqing them. “As you see, Dr. Jones, there is nothing you possess that I cannot take away.”
Just did the same thing for someone that used my email address for match.com. Made his profile pic a donkey.
I'm waiting for someone to post in TIFU that they have accidentally misspelled their email for years probably and lost interviews, appointments and Starbucks reward.
I have a dude here in Sweden who has almost identical gmail as me. There is like 1 thing different, but i dont know what it is. I gotten like 3 of his mails over the years and each time it has been somewhat important. He ordered computer parts from the same computer store as me so i was a bit confused when they sent me the confirmation on the order. Lucky me i have the dudes phonenumber from the first time he was wrong so i basically just drop him an sms that he has given the wrong email again. He thanks me and fixes it.
An honest mistake, a decent response. Why are you Swedes trying to make the rest of us look bad?
Well first time he was wrong he had bought train tickets and the confirmation with his ticket number and the tickets got sent to me. I felt bad for him because they were bought and paid for and obviously he wouldnt be able to ride the train, but his cellphone was included in the confirmation. So i called him and sent him his tickets. He shares my name wich is also the reason he typed the wrong email. As we both use our full names in gmail. So both name and surname.
Well, I am in Sweden as well. Same story, early gmail account. After forwarding a bunch of emails from the same rental car company I asked my counterpart to please change her adress to the correct one. Her response? ”Why would I do that? I’ve gotten all e-mails so far, so it can’t be the wrong one.” 😳😫😡
That would require more awareness than the person who tried to reset the same Microsoft account 10 times in a row possesses
That might be a bit of a stretch, knowing people and all.
"I didn't get the e-mail... it's been 30 seconds. Resend!"
This one is just wannabe hackers using decade old data breaches to try brute force peoples accounts.
I'm in Canada but I have numerous people in India that use my email when they set up services. Many Indian companies don't verify e-mail addresses but require them even though most Indians use their phones for notifications. It's been years and it's so frustrating getting marketing emails and account updates from companies on the other side of the planet. When I can do damage back, I do but a lot of them set up their phones as MFA so I can't always hurt them back.
Are you me? I think I cancelled someone’s hair appointment because I was sick of her using my email. She lives in st Paul and I live in Canada.
I cancelled someone's wedding anniversary dinner reservation, upcoming term teaching schedule, and had a FedEx package redirected for pickup at the most inconvenient location I could find. That seemed to fix the problem. (I had nicely attempted to get them to stop using my email address about eight or nine times over the year prior to that, so I figured that drastic action was called for.)
I cancelled a bunch of dinner reservations to no avail, but finally stopped getting emails after I cancelled a hotel reservation.
I cancelled the order for his new eyeglasses and using the shipping address on the email sent missionaries from a variety of faiths to his home at 8am Saturday morning for three consecutive weeks.
I got some random emails couldn't figure out who was trying to use my email. Until I got some materials about buying a retirement home in Florida. I got hold of the agent and told her to please remove me from her list as I was not buying a retirement home. She calls me Mr X and starts going on a tirade about wasting her time showing all those houses over the weekend. My nickname is one of those names that can be male or female and it's part of my email. I replied, this proves my point. I'm female, and I have never been to Florida. I can only imagine her Pikachu face when I got her reply a few moments later saying she would reach her client later using the number he provided.
Very unprofessional -- she can't even admit there may be a mistake and takes it out on you.
I get this too. I know more about two women in America and Canada than I ever needed to know. I know when their kids school trip is next week, what apps their kids play, the loungewear and perfume she just ordered, etc etc. The worst was a few summers ago she set her kids up on some online gaming thing where you get a notification every time they log in/do something/get a message. I was getting spammed with hundreds of emails a day. I low key hate her.
Change their passwords and lock them out of the account. It's the only way they learn.
I'm not sure these people have the ability to learn
i got a few mundane ones until eventuality got emails from a school about someones kid. tried responding telling them that this guy was having them hand out info to a stranger and that he needs to update his email along with a list of the sites that had his name in the emails and actually got a response they had been notified i got ignored, which i found out when i got a vehicle parts quote and started getting updates about the kid again. so i ended up sending them an unrelated email along the lines of asking her if they would be interested in joining 'us' in the bedroom. though i did follow up actually telling them that it was just a way to grab attention and to tell the person to fix it, with the addition of 'though they might actually be interested from what ive seen of the fetish equipment order confirmations and local hotel bookings' the person using my email has never made that mistake since, so i think it might have worked
Similar issue! I got a bunch of crap until I started getting school ones too. Messaged the teacher to say a parent gave you the wrong email. It stopped for a bit then started up again - I presume the dumbass put the wrong email back in. Messaged the school slightly more annoyed saying please stop emailing me (like, f'real now I know your fucking kids full name, dob, school, teacher, schedule etc). When it started back up again I looked up the headteacher online and messaged her that there had to be some american version of child safeguarding so please stop sending me this kids info before I look up where to report it. Never had any since.
Canadian companies are required to get opt in permission so you could sue them under our anti spam laws.
The company was given opt-in permission. They have no liability for someone using the wrong email to give that permission.
Similar, my dad signed up our whole family with our first.last name when Gmail first started. Not to an annoying level, but semi regularly will get receipts where someone clearly mistyped their email at the terminal. The other fun one is the medical journal in German (last name is very German). But I think my favorite was when the volcanos erupted in Europe and it was totally f-ing with flights I got an email about how a trip itinerary had changed. Like a personal email sent to a bunch of people message. I responded that they had a wrong email address. To which they argued with me that internet was expensive and they were on a trip with my parents so just sent out a message for everyone in the group. Wouldn't you think if my parents were on a trip like that I would figure that out? It took telling them that I had seen my parents that morning in the US for them to finally get it. But it was to late, and people were using that email message for replying all for updates the rest of the trip. Thankfully that was only a short lived vacation.
Several years ago, I started getting voice mails from a dude at Disney World who was trying to call his brother to arrange a joint lunch for their families, get together for certain rides, etc. I texted him that he had the wrong number. I called him and told him he had the wrong number. He kept calling me... Wonder how often he and his brother actually managed to meet up.
Reminds me of that one time I was repeatedly called by the same unknown number. When I eventually answered one of the calls (I was at school before and couldn't answer right away), there was a woman at the other end of the line asking me something about towels?? I don't know what her issue was exactly, but still, I told her that she probably mistyped the number, as I didn't know her and didn't have anything to do with towels. Still didn't stop her to try to reach me every half an hour until I blocked her number. I wonder if she eventually got that towel business sorted out.
One f’wit doctor emailed all my medical details and test results and personal details to some rando email address. Its too easy to do this.
Just last week I got the paperwork from a psychiatrist for a student on the other side of the country who has my name. The paperwork was for getting accommodations for ADHD etc. Just blindly emailed to `fullname -at- gmail`... Three or four pages of PDF talking about what meds he's on, how often he's visited, etc.
My parents' accountant sent their tax returns to my mother's friend, who shares her first name and was also his client at one time.
I was at a club event with about 40 other people, and the organizer said we could sign up for an event by putting our email addresses on a signup sheet. A guy I had never seen before, who apparently just came to this one meeting, asked me how to get an email address. He seemed otherwise normal, and not an alien in a human flesh disguise. After I explained figuring out a unique name to use on Gmail, he started saying things like, “can I have the address ‘sparkyone’? Or maybe my name? What do you mean, someone might be using my name? It’s MY name!” I had to hush the guy because I was trying to listen to the presentation. I never saw him after that meeting. I assume he just chose an email address.
They've gotten really good at their human flesh disguises though...
I have the same issue going on 20 years with a Hotmail account. I tried all the nice ways to let people know. I destroy any account I can find. Some even let you change email addresses without validation. The others get a ten minute burner email account.
Yeah I stick with just changing the password and then disabling email notifications. That way they can't sign up for it again. Wild how common this is.
Your post brings all us people with email shenanigan name twins together :D
I’ve had a particular email account since early 2000s, and I’m still using it. About 15 years ago, I started randomly receiving various types of documents for two separate people who have the same first initial and last name as I do. At this point, there are at least five of us with the same first initial and last name and almost all of them have entered my email into something and I get it. Every chance I get, I either unsubscribe or if it’s something I am able to reply to, I inform them that I’m not the person they’re looking for and please contact that person to get the correct email address. But I’ve received documents for purchasing a house, flight information, family, photos, from around the country, up into Canada, and somewhat recently a bunch of stuff from Australia. Thankfully, most of the time when I email back they are apologetic or at least get it changed. And if it’s got sensitive information, I immediately delete it cause I don’t need that stuff. But I do find it quite annoying because at no point have they ever owned this email, it’s been mine all along. And I’m sorry I got it first. but it’s still mine and I’m not giving it up.
There's a number of references to Canada in these comments. I wonder if it's an issue with .ca vs .com ?
I've seen examples of this with .co.uk Vs .com in a previous job. In the UK we use both to similar degrees so it's easy for someone to get muddled, or someone to hear it wrong too.
I receive quite a few emails intended for other people with the same first and last name as me. It is most likely that the sender got the intended recipient's email address wrong. I reach out to the sender and the intended recipient (if I can figure the email address out) and let them know of the mistake.
When I had to provide an email address for communication while renting a storage unit, I patiently and slowly spelled out the email address, as I had already seen that this guy was a hunt-n-peck typer. When he handed me the printed confirmation, I told him my email address was wrong (in 3 different ways) and he defensively snapped that it was what I had told him. Dude, no it wasn't. Not even close. I spelled it out again, and this time he read it back to me - still wrong. I told him which letter needed to be corrected - he changed the wrong letter. At this point I grabbed the Sharpie off the desk, flipped the incorrect confirmation receipt over, and wrote it in large friendly letters across the page. I can only imagine the number of times this happens across so many offices and people don't catch it, or bother to correct when they do.
None of them have the same first name. Oddly, someone on fb once reached out to me because we did share the same first and last name, but hers was by marriage. I try and be polite about it, saying they should reach out to the person by another means to verify. Unless I get spammed and there's no unsubscribe option. Then I say I'll report it as spam if they don't change/remove it.
Exact same sitch. I figured out her middle initial was missing (by asking some of the people who were emailing me) so I started forwarding to her. She kept claiming it wasn’t her fault but girl- you are doing this to yourself! The best was when she set up credit monitoring and emailed the username and password to herself (me). She’s lucky I’m a good person.
I'm not. I'm a filthy birthday coffee thief.
I feel this. The number of dinner reservations I have canceled....
My mom kept misspelling my brother's email for years, despite us reminding her over and over that was the wrong address. It just kept happening each time she started a new thread or wanted to add him to an existing one. Or we'd have threads with both the real bro and the fake bro because she'd just respond and move on. Some random stranger has seen our family xmas lists, been invited to weddings, bachelor trips, and other gatherings. I'm surprised he never showed up! I'm hoping someone who lives closer to mom has deleted it from her contacts, but knowing her, he's probably going to get our xmas lists again later this year.
He's basically part of the family now.
There’s a guy in the UK who has the same name as me, but with a different middle name, and he is forever giving out my gmail address instead of his own (which I assume has an initial or number or something in it). I regularly get his e-receipts from places he’s bought things online, emails from his family and friends trying to reach him to confirm get-togethers, etc. I just ignore the receipts. When his family or friends email I reply and tell them I live in Canada and they have the wrong email address. (I keep a close eye on my bank accounts and have not been the victim of someone using my identity to buy stuff. All my transactions are accounted for.)
Yeah after all this time it's pretty clear that no one is trying to get into my sensitive accounts. I've got 2F where I can and have never had financial accounts tampered with, but they pretty much all have username logins that aren't my email address. It's when the email is the username that they try to get into stuff thinking it's theirs. I don't even remember how long ago I set up my Microsoft account but they were convinced if they hit the password reset enough times they'd get the email eventually. That happened quite recently and I changed my account photo to a pic that says NOT YOURS and it stopped. Just a matter of time before something else comes up though.
I share the same name as a therapist within the same state. I started getting emails for therapy referrals, which detailed pretty personal emotional information of potential new clients. After a few were sent to me, I replied to one telling them that I was not the therapist and they should not be sending people’s personal information over email to me. I didn’t get any response and continued to get therapy referrals. This made me increasingly uncomfortable, so I sent another email stating it was a HIPAA violation if they continued to email me referrals for therapy with personal information since I was not the therapist they were trying to reach. The emails stopped IMMEDIATELY after sending that email reply, so I assumed they finally got the message.
I had a similar incident with an insurance provider. once HIPAA was mentioned it all magically stopped
I have two gmail addresses that I created when it was invite only. One has a period separating first and last name. Some schmuck in Kansas thinks it is his address. I have replied to probably 30 emails asking the person to let him know this isn’t his email. He doesn’t get it. The other is sort of a joke email with a nickname and I get emails in Spanish from multiple people in Central America using it to sign up for phone service etc.
Unfortunately gmail ignores the period.
Hahaha This happened to me too and it’s by different people that has the same name as mine. One time I got someone who ordered a food delivery. I got their number and whatapps them that they are using my email. I even got their home address. One time it was for university applications or something. There were few from banks. Sometime I email back saying I’m not the person that they emailed. And yes! I got notification that someone tried to reset my password every other day. Just got one today too. I’m happy that I don’t have to put numbers or a dot my email but ehhhhh, such an inconvenient!
I had someone setup a roblox account under my Gmail. I kept getting updates and emails and I just got bored one day and took it over. Like, I don't even know how that happens. But the emails stopped.
Someone with my name in California was supposed to report for jury duty today. I hope she knows. 🤷🏻♀️
I have a twin on the East Coast. I know her address, where she works, a ton about a friend of hers who goes on long vacations (I'm on that friends email list for blast trip updates). She is just about my age and also disabled (as am I) and keeps missing deadlines for filing paperwork. It used to freak me out because I'd call up my disability management company and be like "what is this about \[xxx\] paperwork" and they'd have no idea how another disability claim was opened in my name (I learned to have them immediately check ssn). At this point I DO know the last 4 of her social, and her most recent address. So now if she gets really close to her deadline I call the company and tell them she's not getting the emails and they have to call her or her medical team. I don't know if it helps. I worry about this mystery dopple ganger and hope she's doing ok. She has horrible credit. Like, I've never seen credit this bad. I feel horrible for her, her life seems really hard. She gets turned down for like...really minor lines of credit. Edit: I've tried to get her to understand; she goes through periods of remembering and then does a blast of signing me up for {Important life stuff} emails. I do my best to make sure her carers know.
You are a good person.
I had this. Some idiot thought putting the email address they wanted in the reply field was all it took to own an address. Useless sack of skin.
I've dealt with this for about a year in the early days of Gmail. There is a dude with a similar name in Canada. Sites weren't as diligent about confirming you were actually the legit user of the email used in the account creation process. He kept signing up for things using my initial.sharedLastname gmail account. And it isn't anywhere near a common lastname. It is a name that Google goes "wtf are you on about mate?" when you search it. I've cancelled orders for expensive cookware Rejected attempts to setup accounts for so many random sites. I know I've caused headaches on more than one vacation for the guy because I've waited until late at night the day before to cancel hotel reservations. I changed the password on the account for a ski resort and cancelled their ski lift tickets. Dude was using the email to setup lunch dates. I'd reschedule due to "last minute meetings". What finally got him to stop was a friend or relative of his sent a picture of her kids on a swing with "for your collection" I responded with "And what makes you think I collect random photos of other people's kids" I guess that freaked her out enough to raise hell at him because that was the last time my email was used.
This made me laugh because I’m also in this situation. My husband grabbed original gmail accounts 15 years ago for the whole family that are just our names with no other letters or symbols. My kids were just babies at the time. Somewhere there is at least one person, maybe more, with my exact name who is constantly scheduling dentist appointments and swimming lessons etc for her and her children using my email account. It drives me bonkers. They don’t do it with anything important enough to mess with sadly, but I’ve contacted several businesses to have my email removed from their system.
So there’s at least three people with my name. I’m very careful to stress the dot au at the end of my email address, which is basically just my name. My new vet accidentally missed it and sent my invoice to my email dot com. I came to find out, through the vet nurse, that the person with my name in Ireland has been getting a bunch of email she thought belonged to me. I was confused, as I definitely wasn’t missing any airline tickets and the things listed, just the vet clinic’s invoice, but apologised to her for the inconvenience and we agreed to forward things on etc. A few months later, I got the third persons passport photos, from a location quite near to me. The penny dropped, they were the culprit the entire time. Unfortunately for them, I have no idea what their actual email address might be, so they’re going to keep missing out on the emails going to both me and the person with my name in Ireland. Wonder if they ever got their passport.
I actually am dealing with the same issue myself. The person who has been using my email for years used to live in the Philippines and now lives in Australia. I live in the US and have had my email since 2004. After years of trying to make her stop using my email address, I've decided to get even. I've changed her passwords to some of her accounts, I've written embarrassing reviews of stuff she's bought from online stores using my email, and I've even shared her photo to customer service reps when trying to unsubscribe my email to her accounts. I am normally not this mean and I've very nicely tried to ask her to stop using my email (I found her on social media years ago), but she hasn't soo.....
Similar to OP, I have a early adopter gmail account. flast at gmail. Many different folks would give it out. Worst one was when I started getting etsy sales and purchase confirmations. I don't have an etsy store. I tracked the person done on etsy and used the chat function to inform them. Just a straight forward: "Hey if you are wondering where your etsy confirmation emails are, you put in the wrong email address. I'm getting the messages." The person blasted me, hitting me with profanities and insults. I still tried to talk to them and convince them, but they just escalated their abuse. So I did a password reset, looked over their account. Changed their name to "Doesnt know their own email address" They tried to go nuclear, but well I've been around for a while. OK, I'm old. It just rolled off my back. So I did another reset and deleted the account. "Are you sure? There is no way to restore your account after this." Y They had several pending sales and purchases in their queue. All gone.
I have same to same situation! I just cancelled their hotel reservation… i mean i was sent the link to pay and all… has been going on for a while now.
Did almost the opposite, I upgraded the room and added all the addons that the hotel provided
Yeah my email is just my name and I have 5-6 people that use it. They are all over north and South America I get invited to a lot of family events.
But have you attended any? I mean, there's a chance to create some mayhem...
I’m currently going through a phase of getting emails from Navy Federal telling me payments have been set up for Tonya Jones, I’m not Tonya and not a Jones I get the notifications for low balance as well oh I’m in England too we don’t have a Navy Federal credit union… A few years back I was mistaken for a dairy farmer so I was getting purchase emails from supermarkets, signed up to their forums and the like, I emailed them as I figured it was some farmers livelihood got completely blanked for a good year so I logged into the Tesco farmers portal and made a post saying Asda were paying more per pint than Tesco shortly after I stopped getting emails pertaining to milk.
I have 3-4 people with my name trying to use my email address. Someone in Australia, someone in the UK that owns a butcher shop, an idiot in Connecticut who signs up for a lot of dating sites and porn, and some idiot lady in Minnesota who think it's her husband's. I cancel his hotel and rental cars all the time. One guy in particular (a fabulously tacky elderly gay man who moved to FL) was getting a LOT of super important docs so I emailed his partner who was CCed. He emailed me and was very apologetic and showed me that he changed his email address - BUT did so by including his middle initial which resulted in just doubling up a letter. So it looks like a typo. I still get a lot of his email but less than before. Could never get a hold of anyone else.
I have a cousin that I’ve never met in person. She lives in California, I live in Pennsylvania. We both have the same last name and first initials. She was signing up for stuff using my email address. I managed to find out how to contact her and let her know I was getting her bank statements and other things. Kind of interestingly weird.
Same thing has been happening to me. I've had my addy since the beta days of Gmail when you needed an invite. Initially I contacted people to let them know they were emailing the wrong person. Then I started simply deleting and ignoring. When that didn't work, I started reporting as spam. Now I'm changing passwords, then blocking. How hard is it to learn your own damn email address?!
Yeah. Same. My Gmail is first.last and there is someone who has firstlast as hers. She signs up for radio contests, marketing emails, sends her alumni stuff my way, has her walmart and HSN accounts coming to the email. After an email reach out to her that her emails were coming to my email, she marked my personal email as spam and harassing her way back in 2016. So...I unsubsribe to everything, click "this isn't me" for password resets, mark stuff as spam and create general chaos. Used her gas rewards, coupon codes and others that are emailed. Since she takes the time to go back and resubscribe to all this nonsense every time I unsubscribe 🙄🤔
Cancelling shop orders & the kids school getting an email about GDPR breaches as I was sent a bunch of photos of her kid finally got mine to stop!
New York City and Mississippi for my doppelgängers. I bet New York me was surprised when he got to his Open Table reservation on Broadway after the show and his table was cancelled! My Mississippi doppelgänger buys lots of oil filters and brake pads.
Me too. I love cancelling their orders.
I had the same thing going on for YEARS and I couldn't figure out how to stop it. My e-mail address is my first initial, last name, and abbreviation for my city. Well another person with the same first initial, last name and city apparently got confused. I had this e-mail for 20+ years when it started happening. The worst was when she signed up for [match.com](http://match.com) and I was getting a bunch of thirsty dudes in my e-mail. Eventually I got an e-mail from her kid's teacher wanting to setup a meeting to talk about their behavior. I responded to that and explained the situation begging the teacher to please somehow get through to this lady that it wasn't her e-mail address. It finally stopped after that.
I’ve been dealing with the same thing since 2005. I know so much about this muppet. I’ve locked her out of her T-Mobile account so many times. I’ve messaged the other board members at her work to tell them that this confidential info has been sent to the wrong place because of her. I’ve blocked so many businesses. She recently retired and I got the opportunity set up an account to manage her pension. I did make an international phone call that time to tell them to tell her she’s done it again. But after 19 years of her annoying me and making apparently no effort to sort it out, she’s lucky I gave a shit.
Same situation with me.. It gets exhausting.
Kushal Das - I know you know you're not getting your emails. I've been getting them for years.
I have the same thing going on. I recently had one of their friends send me a dropbox link to their wedding photos. I thought finally, I can get in contact with this woman and have her stop... No, she's still signing up to shit with my email. So I deleted her RAID: Shadow Legends account.