why am i getting another person's emails?

brettcta

for the last 2 years i've been getting someone else's (with the same name) emails. normally it's spam or invoices from companies around the world, but today i have received an order confirmation from BT with this guy's address, home phone number, mobile phone number and BT tracking number. the emails in the past have contained no other forms of tracking this guy to tell him.

my email address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com and his (and where his mail is actually being sent to) is firstnamelastname@gmail.com. i don't understand why google's servers are having an issue with this.

do i ring him and advise him to change his email address, seeing as i have his mobile number? if i do, i'll be doing it on a withheld number obviously.

m5rcc

Very likely to be just a typo from the sender I would have thought....As per a company's policy, if it is not intended for you, ignore it, destroy/delete it

brettcta

no, it's not, the email they have on record for this guy is firstnamelastname@gmail.com and that's what it was sent to. it wasn't sent to my email address.

m5rcc

brettcta wrote: »

no, it's not, the email they have on record for this guy is firstnamelastname@gmail.com and that's what it was sent to. it wasn't sent to my email address.

it's up to you what you wish to do. You may wish to call him you may wish to ignore it from a legal perspective.

thegeekfiles

If your getting email intended for others then always best to contact them. If no luck then check with email provider as maybe able to block these emails?

Sometimes though its companies or spammers trying their luck (least in my experience)

brettcta

these aren't spam emails, i assure you.

they're all named properly (not just 'dear user') and contain addresses etc.

m5rcc

Typical company policy:

"If you are not an intended recipient of this e-mail, please notify the sender, delete it and do not read, act upon, print, disclose, copy, retain or redistribute it."

Eliza_2

I have this too with gmail. I believe the [EMAIL="firstname.secondname@gmail.com"]firstname.secondname@gmail.com[/EMAIL] is read by google as the same as [EMAIL="firstnamesecondname@gmail.com"]firstnamesecondname@gmail.com[/EMAIL] and gmail is interchangeable with googlemail. So all those variables belong to you if you were the first to take the name.

In my situation the problem is that the other person has mistyped their email address when giving it to other people or the senders have mistyped it. The other person's email address includes their middle initial but it's easy to miss it and easy for them to omit it.

I've become very friendly with my other person who is in the US, I know quite a lot about her life - now I just forward the emails on to her.

Hope you get it sorted as it was a real pain when it started, it's happened less and less now she's become aware of it and double checks any email addresses she gives to people.

thegeekfiles

As named correctly then I would have thought the sender would be diligent and remove you from list as wrong person? Not sure if you have asked them?

I personally like to take this approach first.

brettcta

thegeekfiles wrote: »

As named correctly then I would have thought the sender would be diligent and remove you from list as wrong person? Not sure if you have asked them?

I personally like to take this approach first.

but as i say, they're not emailing my address. they're being sent to a different email address but coming to me.

Eliza_2

brettcta wrote: »

but as i say, they're not emailing my address. they're being sent to a different email address but coming to me.

But to google it's the same name. Try sending an email to the other email address (i.e. yours but without the dot) - it will arrive in your inbox.

One of you needs to change email address to stop this happening.