How am I receiving emails not addressed to me?

B0bbyEwing

Just curious how this actually works because in my mind it's a case of surely only emails addressed to you should reach you. 

So my email address is basically something like joebloggs@provider.com

I'm just deleting a load of carp from my inbox & see one that's addressed to joe.bloggs@provider.com

Similar but obviously not the same ... so why does it come to me?

Peter999_2

I take it you are with Google Mail?      The way google mail works is to just ignore the "."      Therefore if my email was peterb@gmail.com I would also receive emails from peter.b@gmail.com & p.e.t.e.rb@gmail.com etc.

It's actually very useful if you want to create a new account with someone and make them think you are a different person.

pramsay13

Your actual address will be in the bcc section of the email so the computer programme will have just included a load of random email addresses that were similar and sent it out, hoping for a gullible person. 

eddddy

As above, gmail ignores dots in email addresses. Other email providers might as well.

See: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en-GB#


Also, scammers might specify a "To address" as "joe.bloggs@BankOfEngland.com" but then put "joebloggs@provider.com" as a BCC address...

...so you think you've accidentally received some inside information sent to somebody important about a fantastic Bitcoin opportunity!

Alderbank

Not all email addresses are created alike.

To many email providers such as Outlook, Yahoo, Apple, joebloggs@provider.com is indeed a completely separate address from joe.bloggs@provider.com. Mail sent to one would not be seen by the other.

Google's Gmail does things differently however.
Dots are ignored. If you have  joebloggs@google then no-one else will be allowed to have joe.bloggs@google, jo.e.b.l.o.g.g.s@google or any other variant because Gmail ignores the dots and treats them all the same. All those variants belong to you and you alone.

Quite a lot of people use Gmail. Perhaps you do?

Neil_Jones

B0bbyEwing said:

Just curious how this actually works because in my mind it's a case of surely only emails addressed to you should reach you. 

So my email address is basically something like joebloggs@provider.com

I'm just deleting a load of carp from my inbox & see one that's addressed to joe.bloggs@provider.com

Similar but obviously not the same ... so why does it come to me?

Couple of options:

1) The Gmail solution as above

2) Catch all.  So basically he-manandskeletor@provider.com would come to you if you have such a solution set up.  Anything before the @ in a catch-all solution will come to you.

B0bbyEwing

Thanks all. Forgot I'd asked this.
Yes you guessed it - it's a gmail email. 

I'll mark it as spam & hopefully not see it again.