Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Other People's Email?
vrimj writes "I have a common enough first name / last name combination that I sometimes get other people's email at my firstname.lastname@gmail.com account. It isn't a big deal if it is a person; I let them know, they fix it. The big problem I am having is with companies and websites. These emails are often no-reply, which means I can't send back a quick note. I got someone's credit card bills for three months before I realized there was nothing for it but calling the company (I tried a couple of emails first). Recently I got a notice about someone's kid signing up for a website. I don't have any option but to hit the response button, and tell them that I first have to say I am that kid's parent or guardian. I didn't know where to go from there. Today I get an invoice from a cable company; it is for a different state. I can't reply. I go to the online support, they tell me my only choice is to call the sales office. I gave in for the bank, but I am not talking to someone else's cable company. Is there any way to make emails to an improperly formatted gmail address bounce or do something else obvious? Is there a technical solution I am overlooking. I doesn't happen that often but it is an increasing PITA with no-reply email addresses. I hate just setting up a filter because that cuts off these other people who made a typo or had someone not enter something correctly, but it is looking like the best choice. It isn't spam, but it isn't my meat."
This sounds like an opportunity to have a little fun. Request a few Miley Cyrus posters, or some KY his and hers samples. Send back a picture of your crotch. The possibilities are endless....
It's not your meat...
Occam's Razor and all that?
Frankly... Filter them out. It is not your job to fix their problems, because in fact that's what you suggest doing. The companies got those email addresses from their client and if they didn't it is and it belongs in your junk folder. Getting on the phone with those companies costs you time and money, and that's where it ends.
I would not suggest filtering out all messages that contain "no-reply" or similar in their From field. I'd suggest that if you get such a misdirected message, you add a custom filter directly to trash (not Junk, that may screw the Bayesian filter). Try matching on the subject or so, for example, for the cable company it typically will have a subject "CableCo Bill of 06/2011", then filter on Subject: "CableCo Bill".
The example you gave with the kid was most likely on purpose done by the kid. I'm pretty sure a kid trying to activate an account would try with a phony email or something else, not realizing that in fact that won't bring them closer to activation. If it does, the activation of the website they applied for is broken. (Besides, really, a clever kid just makes his own "parent email account" and circumvents the system).
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Mark it as spam and delete it.
Most people will ask "Did u getz my e-Mailz?" the moment they see you. When the intended recipient replies in the negative, they will clear things up.
If it was a company sending it, it's still not your problem.
Trolling is a art,
Really, why not just ignore it and throw it all away? If people sign up with the wrong addresses, they might as well notice it themselves...
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
Stop trying to deal with other people's typos, it's not your problem, it's the problem of the person who is signing up for these services and the companies they do business with. When one of these misdirected e-mails comes it, mark it as junk and move on. There is no point in wasting your time.
If the person who was supposed to get it cares, they'll call the company and ask why they're not getting it, and fix the address then.
If they don't care, then it doesn't matter.
We all get email we don't want or care about. Dump it.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Ah, sounds like Anthony Weiner just made a simple typo.
Let the person these emails are supposed to be going to know that it happens a lot so they can correct it, assuming you can find their email address .
Sent from my iPhone 5
I have a bunch of common throw away web mail accounts similar to fake@yahoo.com, nobody@hotmail.com etc..
It is funny how many people sign up for accounts and use those addresses for confirmation. I have about 10 myspace, facebook, photobucket, photo sharing sites etc accounts at my disposal.
Just ignore them. If a company is sending a bill to first.last@here.com and that it is coming to you, either the real first.last is an idiot and gave them the wrong address or you are getting spam.
It isn't spam, but it isn't my meat.
It sounds like this isn’t the case, but I’d point out that “accidently” sending email to the wrong person is getting more traction as a spam and phishing technique. I’ve seen stuff recently (I have a fairly common email too) that goes way beyond the classic and obvious “hey man, here’s the projections you wanted. You were right, you should invest in SomeShitStock right away!”. Again, the stuff you talk about sounds legit and you probably already know this, but just incase, be-careful!
As to the actual post. I do much as you do. If it’s an actual person, quick reply sorts it out. If it’s automated and there is an _obvious_ support or admin email link (most businesses seem to have a “if you have received this in error” link now) I’ll do. But as you said, there is a point though where you have to draw the line at how long you’ll play phone tag for someone else’s benefit. I always figure stuff like that eventually works itself out anyway. I don’t want people going through billing nightmares, but unreasonable is unreasonable.
On that note I’d point out that any company _billing people_ over email should have one of those activation link via email dealies. Most web forums have that, you’d think a cable company could manage to confirm an email before sending out personal info (in fact, here in Canada I think they legally have to).
I too have a very common firstnamelastname@gmail.com. For personal emails, I just reply and let them know they've got the wrong falloutboy. One guy, a screenwriter in LA, gave my address to a lot of his family, so I had to have kind of an awkward exchange with his mother and one of his aunts who CONTINUES to send me photos of her young son. This is weird stuff I don't want in my inbox.
For the DirecTV emails, I submitted like 15 messages to their general customer service inquiry form. That took like four months to get completely cleared up.
Once I got looped in on an email thread where the other three people were high school kids using Facebook, so my only method for actually communicating was that I had to add as a friend a high school girl. I'm a 30 year old man. My wife was less than thrilled.
Delete it. If it keeps coming through from an individual source, set up a rule to automatically delete it. It's the only solution that isn't going to take up more and more of your time (apart from abandoning the email address).
https://alephnull.uk/
I ignore it. It isn't my responsibility to route somebody else's email. And if I'm stuck on somebody else's email address, I set up an filtering to 1) discard all email from that address, and 2) send an autoreply to unsubscribe, which may or may not annoy somebody at the sender's origin.
It's been happening to me for ages. I just ignore any emails that are obviously intended for someone else. It's not my job to fix it.
I also get a chuckle when I receive emails with a disclaimer which claims I MUST destroy the email if I'm not the intended recipient. It's such an incredible display of arrogance.
Beyond that, if they're personal e-mails, I usually reply and tell them they have the wrong address. If someone sets up online billing, it's their responsibility to ensure that they're receiving the e-mails. It's no different than if you failed to get a bank statement or credit card bill via snail mail--you know you owe the money, and need to call in to find out how much.
Sent from my iPhone
I'm guessing that's "not an option" for you. Too bad, because not only is it the cleanest solution, it is the only solution that won't turn out half-assed.
My solution to the problem was to look for the person’s name and address in the billing information being sent to me. Obviously writing them an email is impossible. So I wrote one person a nice letter warning them about the issues of fraud and identity theft, asked them to fix their email address records with various companies, and encouraged them to be more careful with their personal information. It worked, all the stuff from one lady no longer appears in my inbox. Unfortunately *someone else* has started to do the same thing, so I’ll need to dust off that letter soon.
For Apple's Mail.app there is a "bounce message" which returns something pretty much like a "no such address" type of response. There are probably plug-ins for Thunderbird that do the same, but where I looked for them I mostly found plugins that "redirect" mail to addresses of your choice keeping the headers intact - so there may be an issue with terminology that might complicate your search for a solution.
Stop trying to be a nice guy.
I have an uncommon first.last name combo, but still end up getting signed up for weirdest things... there appears to be a kid in Croatia with the same name, and of course, there's no way to reach out to him and inform him of the mistake he repeatedly makes.
As a last ditch effort, when he finally signed up to facebook [with my email], I reset the password, logged in and messaged a few of his new friends that this is "not the John Smith you are looking for", politely explained the situation, and asked them to kindly inform their friend to change his password. Due to age more than anything, they totally freaked out [thinking I haxxored into their account to steal all their info... or something:], as the wall posts of "OH MY GAAAWD!!!" quickly followed... but the dude does seem to be more careful since :)
I know it sucks, but in a sue-happy world that one nice thing you do for someone could be misconstrued as an invasion of privacy. Then being helpful turns into an angry back and forth from someone who doesn't understand it was their mistake to begin with. Worse yet they claim you looked at their incredibly-privileged-yet-somehow-goes-through-email messages that has now totally harmed them.
Just delete these emails. Create a filter, make sure you're not storing stuff anywhere, and leave it be.
-Matt
Are you really this stupid? Why is it your problem and what is wrong with deleting them, filtering them, or a host of other things that are a lot easier than the amount of time you've put into this? Finally, you type a wall of text about it to slashdot. Herp derp my email duh.
The big problem I am having is with companies and websites.
Is your name Billing? Sony Billing?
firstname.lastname@gmail.com is a recipe for spam email. Try to get firstname.mi.lastname@gmail.com at minimum if you name is really common.
Or purchase a custom domain and forward those emails to a gmail account.
lastname@yourdomain.com -> forward to -> nickname@gmail.com
but you also don't want to bother fixing it....
Fix: Get a different email address.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
I got email meant for Joe Lieberman and his wife for a long while back around 2002. Imagine the possibilities.
"I am receiving emails that do not belong to me. What should I do?"
When I joined Slashdot many years ago it was a cutting edge forum of interesting news with interesting comments - very techie.
Now this makes the front page.
Oh... and the new ajax anti-user interface {sigh}
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
1) Change your e-mail address to something less obvious. Has its' draw backs, of course.
2) Report the corporate ones to the police as identity theft cases
It seems from your description that this is becoming a significant nuisance.
So just get a new account, with a non common e-mail address, notify all your contacts and start using that.
On the original account, put an automatic reply notifying the sender that they probably got a wrong address.
Dots are ignored when sending to gmail accounts, so firstname.lastname@gmail.com is the same address as firstnamelastname@gmail.com. So it's not just a . typo - they've actually got the letters wrong in the person's email address, which I guess would make me less interested in trying to help them. http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10313#
.... and 1 month ago I found out that I was co-authoring a paper in Veterinary.
Set up a canned message in GMail, telling them the email is an error. Set up a filter to bypass the inbox, delete, and reply with the canned message to all future emails from that address. Done.
Post them to alt.flame. Deleting your own email address, of course.
--
BMO
If it's a personal email, I mail them back and let them know they've got the wrong guy. If it's some web site that they've signed up for, I'll try to log in and leave a comment to their profile. I've gone as far as poked around for phone numbers and called and texted them (that freaks people out, but... not my problem). I'll also often change the email to "not(address)@(domain)" and even sometimes randomize the password.
Some of the no reply ones I've marked as spam, and there's at least a couple of people (individuals) who I've emailed back more than once and told them I'm not their guy. No response, and continued emails. Those go into the spam folder also.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
Somebody signed up for Orkut Brazil with an address for one of my domains (catch-all caught it). I'm perfectly happy to "give" them that address, and have it forward somewhere else, but of course I can't contact them. Dear Google: if you're going to continue to spam me, have a fucking contact address. I know you're all very busy doing no evil, but maybe *some* point of entry would be useful.
I just set it up so that any mail there bounces to all the abuse@ addresses I could find, but that's not the greatest solution.
Haida Manga
Write to your Congresspeople asking them to create a law requiring businesses to address the problem, sort of like a second anti-SPAM act. Write to the Consumer Protection Bureau (if it gets off the ground), the FTC, or whatever other jurisdiction the sender may fall under. Write articles to your local paper--if you write well, it's an interesting enough problem they may well publish it.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
If there is an expectation that email will be handled correctly even if sent to the wrong address, then people get more careless. Companies get more lax in their procedures. The problems frustration equilibrium stays at a higher value. Much like people typing in captcha values for nonsense, it ruins it for everyone.
I know I'm not the first to say it, but seriously, just delete them if they are not yours. It is not your responsibility. Better still, as others have said, filter them out if they are cases of recurring senders.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
To one that can't be so easily confused with someone else's.
my GF has been getting a bunch of these for someone else that has the same first initial as her. After getting a few very personal email replies obviously directed at this other person, she attempted contact (as these folks were replying to an email this other person had sent). There was much confusion between the two of them until I suggested that I look at the headers. It seems that this other person had configured their mail client to set the "Reply To" header to be my GF's email. Unfortunately, even upon trying to explain to this other person what was going on, this other person won't/can't fix it so she is apparently going to be stuck never having anyone be able to reply to anything she sends out. It's kind of frustrating, because it's such a simple fix/problem, but seems to be out of the realm of non-techie folks.
Not sure if they've addressed this situation, but Gmail has/had a problem with the dot between first.last@gmail.com. It is actually ignored. john.shopkin@gmail.com, johnshopkins@gmail.com, and johns.hopkins@gmail.com would all route to the same address. I've gotten a couple that were addressed to someone else, and the position of the dot was one space off. Completely different last name.
Change your email address, my verbose friend :)
I signed up for an address with one of the free providers a few years ago. As soon as I signed in the first time, I ended up receiving multiple messages from the former owner of the account. I've managed to get rid of all of the unwanted messages except for one--from a major university that keeps sending me crime and safety notifications. They have no contact information published in the email message, and attempts to get to a responsible person through the switchboard have been useless.
If it's that much trouble for you, either filter out the offending messages (based on senders/subjects), or switch email addresses.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I get this one guys mail all the time. I've manage to sign him up for bbqs and all kinds of fun stuff. If I remember right I even told them my "daughter" wasn't allow to go on some field trip.
First Email "
Dear Bentley Families,
You are receiving this email because we still have not received a gift or pledge from your family towards the Annual Fund.* While we understand that this has been a particularly challenging economic time for many of our community members we hope that you will still consider a gift or a pledge to the Annual Fund. In an effort to keep tuition as affordable as possible, Bentley, as other Independent Schools, sets a tuition level below our annual operating costs. The difference, or gap, between tuition and the price of a Bentley education is covered by Annual Fund dollars raised. This year the gap is $1,500 per student. While we do not expect every family to give at this level we do expect each family to participate to the best of their abilities. Every dollar donated will be used this fiscal year towards the benefit of your children.
You may make an easy no-fee gift by credit card by clicking on the GIVE button on the right side of our home page: www.bentleyschool.net . You may also mail in a check or make a donation of stock. No gift is too small. Every single gift counts. We receive gifts from $1 - $40,000. Please join us in supporting Bentley to provide the very best education possible for our students.
Avoid a call- make your gift or pledge today.
Many thanks sincerely, "
My reply"
To Whom It May Concern:
I would love to be able to help with your fund raiser, unfortunately due to the current economic situation I will be unable to help with your fund raiser. I'm doing everything I can just to ensure my daughter has a proper eduction. This includes a list of things we've had to cut from out normal lives. Two of the major things we've had to cut out is electricity and food. While we do have some food, we have no electricity in the conventional sense. I have to power my computer using a battery being recharged from stolen lemons (my neighbor has a tree). Is there any way you could maybe have a fund raiser or pass around a donation plate to help me and my family?
Humbly Yours,"
This goes on back and forth for a while with his daughters school.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
I have the same thing happen with snail mail - mostly bill collectors. Apparently they just LOVE trying to guess at addresses and track people down. There is another person with my first and last name (different middle) born in the same state as me on the same day (I found all this out while sorting out similar problems I was having with his crap showing up on my driving record).
At least every 3 weeks I get a new collection notice from some company trying to get money from him. I call them up and they always act as if I'm trying to cheat them or something. One collection agency actually tried to convince me it would be better to just pay the guys bill anyways. Thing is, since he's SSN is different none of them ever make it to my credit report, so if they don't take my word for it I don't care too much.
Did have an interesting traffic stop once though. I didn't know why it was taking so long until the cop came back asking whether or not I had any narcotics charges on my record. After that processed for a second and realizing he wasn't just messing with me we got it cleared up. He was close to calling for backup as my "evil twin" (as I've come to refer to him :)) was supposed to be incarcerated at that time.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
we need an undeliver button. A way to just bounce the message back as not able to be delivered. This should handle all cases because the message was not truly delivered. It should be the companies responsibility to monitor for messages that were not deliverable and update the accounts.
I typically just mark misdirected messages as spam. I didn't request the message (so it's unsolicited), and it's the sender's duty to get the address correct, I'm certainly not going to put time or thought into fixing it.
I once got an e-mail from Dell that gave me a login to someone else's account, including their name, address and various other bits of information. I called them to fix that. I also got an e-mail from classmates thanking me for opening a new account, I closed the account.
Bottom line - if someone's signing up for a service, they better get the address correct, and online services should ALWAYS verify the address (by sending a message to it that contains a link) BEFORE finishing account creation.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
After buying a new house we started getting snail mail addressed to the former owners. Most of it was junk which just get put in the recycle bin. Some were bills which we marked as 'return to sender' and handed back to the post deliver person. Eventually, a collection agent rang our bell to serve a legal notice, we told them to take a hike as the person they were looking for is now in parts unknown. That stopped the bills from coming.
1. Take all these emails and post them your very own blog! ....
2. Advertise on your blog!
3.
4. Get rich.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
If they buy stuff like air tickets reply that you did not order then cancel the order. That will annoy somebody so that they only do it once. airlines are happy to oblige.
I still get some idiot on comcast who has a the wrong domain names in there m$ email client setup and tries to access our email servers now and again. Dont expect change.
I changed the addressing format as well however short fred@fredsmith.tld accounts are out of the question, the spammers might be reduced but those addresses still are for sale never to be removed.
Delete it, and create a more unique email for yourself. John.DoeZIPCODE@gmail.com for example Of course that likely means that down the road you'll be stuck wondering who is getting mail meant for you.
My name isn't all that common, but even so this has happened to me. I first learned about a "john Sauter" in southern California who is some kind of medical doctor when he traveled to a conference and I got notices from his hotel. I told them that they had the wrong e-mail address, and thought no more about it. However, I kept getting other messages obviously intended for him. When there was a reply address available I would politely tell the sender that I am a computer programmer in New Hampshire, not a medical professional in southern California.
It got a little scary, though, when he sold his practice, and a lawyer sent me the legal paperwork. I don't know what kind of trouble you can get into by receiving legal papers intended for someone else—it would be easy to run afoul of the insider trading rules in the case of a public company, or HIPPA rules for medical information.
About 3 years ago I started getting emails regarding tax returns from Intuit. All for a guy by the same name except he's from Georgia, USA.
I've tried contacting them, to no avail. Intuit says they can't send him anything due to privacy etc, meanwhile I'm getting all of his details in an email.
Since I had his address and everything I even tried calling the guy, but I guess his number is unlisted or something, couldn't find him. Figured that tax return emails were kind of important.
I've got pretty much the same situation with my gmail account, but I'm getting tons of personal messages. I just tell them that I'm not the person they're after, but sometimes that doesn't work. When that happens and I keep receiving e-mail from that person, I reply with messages like, "This Saturday? No, I'm afraid I can't come. That's when my John and I are having our 'coming out' party."
That usually takes care of it.
It is spam. You never asked them to send those emails to you. If email sender does not provide good return address or lies with "we got your address from public sources and you can unsubscribe", when your address is not public, you are free to report them to spamcop.
That's what I've done, this website gets about 20% of my misdirected mail from 2 GMAIL accounts. I just don't have time to post it all.
http://sorryitsnotme.blogspot.com/
I have the Canned Responses set up from Google Labs that has a short, sweet, "Hi, you got the wrong [John Doe]. Don't bother apologizing/replying, I know it was a typo. Just update your addressbook, please."
I just do a quick reply to all with that canned response, and then I assume I've done my due diligence regarding the error. If nobody gets the reply, that's not my problem. If I still get more misdirected mail from that source, I just trash it.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Personally I would ignore all this as you may stumble upon private info and that's unethical, but you could try a simple approach. Make an email explaining the situation and address it to as many variations on your address as you can think of. If they don't take heed of your advice to double check their user info for their services, that's their fault. I take the same approach with regular mail for old roommates. I only remind them once or twice in the first month. I don't collect their mail and resend it to them or even tell them to come pick it up, I simply shred it -with the one exception of a diploma! It's up to them to contact the companies of interest and make sure they change their address on file.
This happens to me quite a bit. One thing i've done is goto the website the email came from and use the Forgot Password link to have them send the password to me, then login as them and change the email :)
Doesn't work on every site depending on their security checks, but gets me out of a lot of emails.
Also a lot of what I get is just newsletter type stuff from sites someone signed up for. Most of them have Unsubscribe links at the bottom so I just hit those.
Back before rising spam levels made this unworkable, I used to have a catchall address for my domains. One of my domains in .com has the same name as a church school in ".co.uk". At the beginning of each term, I'd get some messages addressed to students who hadn't figured out the address yet, and I'd send back a canned reply.
One day I got a message titled "I am going to kill you tonight". This was a bit worrisome. Especially since my site predicted which dot-coms were going to go bust, based on their financials, and I routinely got threats. But those threats were usually from corporate lawyers and CFOs, and threatened litigation. After reading the message, though, it was clear it was aimed at some kid at the school.
This was shortly after Columbine, and it said tonight", so I felt I had to do something. I was able to get hold of someone at the school by phone, and they woke up the headmistress (8 hour time difference) and put her on the line. I read her the text of the message, and she immediately knew who it was. She told me it was a 12 year old kid, and the matter would be taken care of.
It's a good thing it was a UK school. In the US, a SWAT team probably would have been sent in.
A lady in New York sent me pictures of her new purse.
The film crew for the movie The Fighter sent me info about the shooting schedule and on-set parking issues.
I receive flight and car rental reminders for guy in Phoenix.
I've even received bills from a pool company and electrician in North Carolina.
The worst was a California photographer that signed up with numerous photography companies at a trade show.
Sometimes it's it interesting, but mostly it sucks. I unsubscribe where possible and delete the rest.
Sure, you could just delete them or filter them and leave it be. But if you want to do something nice for a stranger (but a stranger who shares your name, which kinda puts you in a special club), why not perpetrate some special trickery in order to determine the person to whom the emails are intended so you may contact them to inform you're receiving mail intended for them. It's really a shame that you can't simply mark emails with "return to sender, addressee not known." It's easy to not care. I'm not suggesting making this your life's effort, but doing something nice for someone you don't know is always a good way to please the cosmos.
If I started receiving such E-mail messages from companies, the first thing I would do would be to check my credit reports to make sure I am not a victim of identity theft. If the reports are clear, I would trash the messages.
However, it the messages continue to be sent by the same company, I would do some on-line research and determine the postal address of the company's headquarters and the name of the company's CEO. I would mail a postal letter to the CEO with a printout of the message -- with all headers -- demanding the company stop annoying me. I would clearly point out that the messages are going to the wrong E-mail address. Also, if the message was about a past-due bill that someone else owes, my letter would suggest that I might sue for harassment.
outside of an obvious case of someone trying your email to see if you are the person they are trying to reach (hey is this bob from phoenix college back in 1998? ) I would reply to every email as if you were a victim of identity theft. Its absolutely crap that you get legal guardian questions about someone elses kid. That means some asshole put your email instead of theres. Those sites arent in the habit of randomly guessing. Respond so that whatever you pick could be the worst possible result for the person who is using your email address instead of theirs.
I have had my personal email address for quite some time (5-digit UID and it's the same email address with which I registered my /. account, so 1998?). About a year ago, I got a reply to an Emily Wright. Luckily, the original email had her correct address (same as mine, but with a digit). Apparently, she goofed on setting up the reply-to in her email client.
Anyway, I forwarded her the email explaining the problem and giving pointers on how to fix the problem. Well, Emily replied and accused me of hacking her email account and flat out insisted that she owned my email address and had been using it for the past two years (or about a decade less than I've had the account).
My attitude went from "helpful technology capable guy" to "fuck you, you arrogant bitch". Now, anything addressed to Emily goes straight to the trash can, no matter how important it appears to be.
Someone registered a PayPal account using my common email, and I am now unable to open a paypal account on it or associate that email with my own account. I called PayPal multiple times, and they do not want to close the person's account, hoping that he somehow returns and fixes the issue (which he never will, afterall, it's not his email).
They're fucking idiots about it, too. I wish I knew an higher up who could help. *sigh*
I have my last name registered as a domain so I could have a first_name@last_name.org email address. But I occasionally get news mails that address me as Ralph, my dads name, from the Missouri state university, where my dad went. I also get environmental political action emails addressed to him.
I've examined the links closely and none appear to be phishing attempts.
I'm wondering if these institutions have bought supposed good email addresses from a company that came about them through some kind of "smart" interpolation algorithm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
I've gotten all sorts of things to my Gmail account (firstinitialLastname@gmail.com). Navy job interview details, hotel reservations, job quotes, renewals of UK commercial driver's licenses.
I correct individuals, just a quick note to say "Sorry wrong e-mail address." Except some girl named Paige (same last name as me). I have been trying for 6 months to get her to stop sending me her stupid chain humor letters (she thinks she's e-mailing her dad), and she said she would several times. Today she got Reported as Spam to Gmail.
For companies I if they don't make it easy to unsubscribe, I Report Spam. They should check e-mails before blindly accepting and mailing to them.
It's not your problem if someone mis-addresses an email. Eventually, if you keep deleting them, the sender will figure it out.
Just make a mail filter that checks if there is a no-reply and junk the mail. That will work as long as you don't have any subscriptions running, but on the other hand you can filter them first so that they aren't deleted.
However - every company should have a postmaster account so send any complaints to that account. The postmaster account is required by a RFC. And many companies do have a contact page or contact email addresses. Some even have abuse@... in which case you can use that too.
If they request you to call a certain number then don't. Place a collect call to them instead or write them a snail mail letter. Polite snail mail may be a lot more effective.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Share and let us enjoy the conversation.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I reply with goatse
You could...
Start collecting them. Learn about the interests of those other John Smiths of the world. Then call them up someday or have a visit with then and amaze them with your psychic abilities.
Sell them to Wikileaks as flack against corporations. Might turn into something.
Print them out and mail them to their original recipients. They'll get real peeved to think their paperless preferences are broken.
Cancel the services and say someone fraudulently signed up for something using your information. That's bound to turn their heads.
There is little, if anything, to be gained from your email matching your first+last name. If your name is common, you are doing yourself a major disservice by deliberately setting yourself up for errors. More than that, do not change it to anything remotely close to your name, like some of the posts above suggested, because then you are guaranteed that some of your emails will be misdirected to one of the other John Smith's.
I have been using both a one-word email, and my firstname.lastname@gmail.com. Picking a word which is meaningless in English adds extra safety from human errors. Normally your would want to use your name to make the match more obvious and reduce number of errors, but in your case the effect seems to be the opposite. Verdict: lose it.
Rather then make a obsure_name_here@gmail.com pay for a personal domain name (something like $10-$15 a year) and then continue to use the gmail service with that domain name.
Eliminate the common gmail.com domain rather then your name. So rather then First.LastName@gmail.com have First.LastName@your_domain_here.com.ca.net.etc.
https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new
So you can use that as an excuse to delete it as soon as you realize it is not intended for you and not feel bad about it. Not that I think confidentiality laws could get you in any trouble, it's just what I tell my self to not feel guilty about immediately deleting and filtering this kind of mails that I also get in my also rather mistakable gmail address
From Harvard
Dear Emily,
Thank you for your application to the Management Program. Unfortunately,
you have not met the admission requirements. Your grade point average of
3.42 is slightly above the 3.33 required. You did not earn the required
grade in ECON 1010. As a result, your application has been made
ineligible. You may take the alternate course ECON 1600. You have two
attempts to pass the required economic preadmission course. Failing to
obtain a B on the second attempt will permanently bar you from admission
to our ALM in Management Program.
If you decide to continue your studies with us it will not be easy.You
are required to maintain your cumulative GPA at 3.33 or higher. It is
important to note that any grade below B+ will push you even further away
from degree program admission. Please by mindful that all program grades
count toward your cumulative GPA, including required repeat courses.
Earning your graduate degree and moving ahead with your professional plans
is of paramount importance. Our program may be an obstacle to this goal.
Your valuable time and money might be better spent at another institution.
You may even be eligible to transfer credits earned and begin again with a
new GPA.
We hope you accept this message in the spirit that it was intended, to
support your degree completion plans. If you have questions regarding this
information, you may call our office at **********.
Best wishes for future academic success.
Regards,
Donna *****
What asshats.. I told them the email was misdirected and didn't get a response either.
I got a free key to office 2010 for Mac because of this, if I were a less honest person I might have actually used it.
It is common for me to receive email from a company when I have never supplied an email address to them. As an example, I had my car serviced at an out of state car dealer while visiting family. I began receiving email from them to an old email address that I had not actively used in years. The same for my lawn service company. My point is that it is entirely possible that the email address is paid for by the company in question and the provided email has not been properly verified by the company the provides the message. I contacted these companies and asked how they obtained my email address and the usual response is that they have no idea at all. My general experience is that the lower level people have no idea about how this is done, don't really care, and have no ability to fix the problem. I was receiving daily phone calls from a collection agency that was convinced that my phone number belonged to a woman I never heard of. Every time that they called they said that they would fix the problem and they would not call back. After about a month my wife was overly stressed (because of the timing of the call) so when I chatted with them next I mentioned that if they called again I would contact the police. The caller told me that not even the police could stop them from calling me. So...... I chatted with the VP of the bank. Our next call was from a a rather high level manager that left his direct number and he asked very politely that he be informed immediately if we received another call and that we please do not bother the VP again. OK, so, lesson learned. If no link or general method for getting off the list is available, work your way to the top and ask why you are receiving personal information (such as billing information) for one of their customers; if you have time to kill or it really annoys you. If they blow you off, well, my guess is that there are privacy rules that they just violated and you can likely pursue that if you desire.
I also have a firstname.lastname@gmail.com account and frequently get email that is neither intended for me nor sent to me. I sometimes look at the email headers and many times my email address is nowhere to be found. It appears that if Gmail receives an email for a non-existent account it simply routes it to whatever account it can find that is most similar. And I believe that firstname.lastname@gmail.com accounts get ranked highest because they have no numerical permutation.
I have a first@FirstLastname.com e-mail address. I get a bit of e-mail intended for other people with the same name is me. Eventually I found the person that most were getting me mixed up with, due to a long chain mail that had his original address in with the rest of them (he was first@FirstMiddleinitialLastname.com).
I now forward e-mail I suspect is his directly to him.
There are TWO urologists who have the same surname as me at the university where i went to school. Somehow, I got the default "surname@school.edu" address instead of either of them, and I frequently got emails intended for them.
It's much more fun to get unintended emails when they're about the problems some poor guy is having with his junk.
"I know my follow-up is scheduled for next week, but my scrotum is painfully swollen and I can barely walk. Can you see me any earlier?"
I was usually kind enough to let them know that they had the wrong address.
If someone signs up for a website using my email, I immediately go there, reset their password, and change the email address to something like "abuse@yahoo.com."
If a kid signs up for an account with me as their parent, I immediately revoke their account. I'd want someone to do that to my kids if they were trying to get around me.
Any other accounts, I do what I can to alert the company, but for the most part they get labeled as spam. If the company did not take steps to verify the email address, then it is absolutely spam, and not my problem.
I have a 3 character yahoo ID, and I get a ton of these. Unfortunately I was never able to make any impact on the person filing tax returns using my email address.
I'm Peggy.
If you think you've got it bad, you should see what my inbox looks like!
-Sandy Claus
Just reply to the sender for obvious cases, ignore the rest it might be spam and/or phishing.
Other than that just be happy that you are not the only one with your name. If googling "firstname lastname" only shows results that belong to you, some embarrassing ones from 1997 that won't go away ever you would appreciate some mixup...
You could become a criminal and take advantage of some of the offers as opposed to taking your own personal time trying to do the right thing OR just change your name on your Gmail account.. Duh!
I got a surname@gmail.com address and EVERYDAY i receive at least one e-mail by mistake. People type xyz.surname@gmail.com as xyz,surname@gmail.com and there you go...
I tried filter, warn people, flag as spam, but there's no sure way to catch it all. I at least try to have fun. So far i've got:
- Pics from a married man to his male lover.
- US$370 transfer from Paypal (i didn't take the money, by the way).
- Dozens of resumes.
- E-mail from a girl to his teacher who would do ANYTHING to don't fail his course.
- Got my e-mail banned from Facebook because someone signed up with my email and messed up (Solved later).
- Deleted 100+ e-mail accounts that used my email as secondary email for password recovery.
Change your e-mail or live with it.
Any unsolicited email from any company is illegal and punishable by a fine if you tell them to stop and they continue. Sometimes simply mentioning the CAN SPAM Act is enough to get it to stop, however, in a situation like this, you are almost destined to receive emails multiple times AFTER complaining to the companies, in which case you can take each one to small claims court and rake in the cash.
-0p7imu5_P2im3
Works very well!
I post the whole mail on a forum, including the confidentiality part and ask on the forum how to get rid of this sort of spam.
Afterwards I inform the poster by mail of the forum post. In case this contains real confidential information, this works very well.
Never twice the same mistake.
Eventually it makes my names alike to change email address.
See above.
My gmail, and coincidentally real.name happens to be the most common name in my country.
I've received dozens of invitations, pictures from parties, visa information, whatnot.
At first I tried to contact them and tell them that they must be mistaken, but the first actual reply I got was something along the lines 'you were supposed to receive these'.
That's when I stopped caring, and either ignored them, deleted them or left them be unread (I'm a bit messy like that with my gmail accounts).
I get this all the time as well. I sometimes wonder if it's a new kind of spam, because I just recently got an email from a kid signing up for some website. I also get tons of school notices about things my "kid" is supposed to be attending. I usually email them back (when possible) telling them it's the wrong address.
I've had three serious and concerning incidents. One was the complete tax return of some dude in Texas, complete with bank account numbers, SSN, address, phone, etc. It was a veritable identity theft kit right to my mailbox. I emailed the tax return agency that sent it to me, and they were quite concerned. The second major incident was, like the summery, credit card statements that I too had to call them to notify the original account holder. The final one was some Harvard students thought I was their professor. I must have gotten about 20 papers emailed directly to me.
I once had a girlfriend who had a fairly common name as well. She got a rejection letter from grad school and so took a horrible job thinking that would be it for her life. Luckily, one of her professors inquired why she hadn't applied for her class yet. Turns out there was a student with the same name who got my girlfriend's acceptance letter! The idiots in admissions swapped the names when that is precisely why they are never suppose to use names but student ID # ONLY. It took the whole next semester to rid the mistake from the system as she constantly had all her classes purged -due to being rejected on file and then the admissions people kept failing to file the manual override before the computer automatically purged her again and again.
I've had similar problems mostly due to people signing up for things using my email address. One was a guy signing up for Match and giving them my email address and another one was a guy signing up for a job site.
The one on the job site was a guy with my same name across the country that I'd never met so I called him up (I had his resume which had my email on it as well) and helped him fix his profile.
The Match one was a lot more irritating; those people are really spammy. I might have logged in and changed his response address to YouFail@DatingOnMatch.com since they sent me a password in the sign up e-mail. That individual has gotten a lot better about signing me up for things since.
For other e-mail that looked like they might be important to people I've tried to contact the sender. Everything else just gets deleted.
Lots of times I get messages on my answering machine that are not meant for me. I do nothing.
True, I worry a tiny amount when I get calls reminding people of their doctors appointments or schools calling about someone's child.
What is annoying is when I get calls from auto-dialers where they have programmed in the wrong telephone number. They can be a major pain to get stopped. I wish they would make those illegal. Or force them to have a button to can push to not get anymore calls.
I have first initial + lastname @gmail.com and I have a bunch of people with the same name combo that use the address when they fill out forms, all the time. I ended up getting enough personal information on one of them that I knew his real name, where he grew up, his highschool, his date of birth, his current address, etc. Pretty much everything I could ever want it I wanted to do some ID theft.
I tracked him down on facebook and sent him a message telling him all this. Since then I haven't gotten anymore of his emails, but other people are still doing it too.
Do these people think the emails just go to oblivion? I mean they are giving my email address when they do shit like rent a UHaul so I get all of the information on that transaction in confirmation emails.
You're being too helpful. The email system is broken, and has been broken since the start. The problem is that anybody can put any email address they want as the return or reply address, whether it belongs to them or not. There's no verification of identity or "ownership".
It's not your job to fix this. So, delete it or put filters in place to do that automatically when possible.
Only if it gets overwhelming you'll need to take some kind of action. I once had a situation with my live.net domain (now owned by Microsoft) where a spammer thought that live.net email addresses would look nifty on spam for "live girls" phone services. Enough outraged recipients emailed the return address that it created a problem not just for me but for my ISP, which got flooded for a day or so to the point of degraded service until they could put filters in place.
I was able to track down the culprit with the help of a C|Net news story offering a monetary reward, a helpful hacker-type, and with the cooperation of the call center that provided service for the "live girls" line. Amazingly, the end result was not just the discontinuance of the spam, but two anonymous money orders in the mail (I think totaling $900) that was supposedly the disgorged profits of the spammer. The operator of the service claims he hired some guy to publicize the service, and had "no idea" he was doing so via spam. The call center gave the operator 24 hours to resolve the situation, threatening to disconnect the lines.
Aside from that, there was once an ISP at live.com (pre-Microsoft), and many users mistakenly entered their email address as live.net instead. For a time I would helpfully email correspondents telling them that they were using the wrong return address. And too many people just didn't "get it" and got hostile. It got to be enough of a bother that I set-up an auto-reply. But the auto-reply just got me bounce messages more often than not compounding the problem. So, I wound up just dropping messages addressed to live.com addresses on the floor. Which is probably the best thing for you to do.
"Is there any way to make emails to an improperly formatted gmail address bounce or do something else obvious? Is there a technical solution I am overlooking" No, because its porperly formatted, just improperly addressed. As for how to handle it, it's the email equivalent of a wrong number. I'll let you decide that.
With an email address like "firstname.lastname@gmail.com"! I mean, you might as well have the address "user@example.com"!
I assume you “correct” Gmail address is FirstnameLastname@gmail.com if that is correct with Gmail you can configure a filter to move all messages send to firstname.lastname@gmail.com (or any combination of firstname lastname and punctuation signs) directly to trash or do with it whatever you want. Is as easy as going to configuration and establish the rule.
I you do this your part of the problem is solved, you’ll no longer will see this messages and the problem of the other part is their problem not yours, so
Since I had his address and everything I even tried calling the guy, but I guess his number is unlisted or something, couldn't find him.
Wait.... you couldn't find him? You have his address! Write him a letter. You know, those things that people used to write, on paper, and put in an envelope also made of paper.
My wife used a windows app called I think MailWasher many years ago. It would view the email still on the pop server and then somehow view the email (or maybe just headers? i forget) and selectively bounce them a few different ways. Seems like something like that could be useful. Doesn't seem like that sort of thing should even be possible, tho, and I suspect it generated "fake" bounce messages. Now with so many different mail servers with each one generating its own 550's, do any companies really thoroughly process their bounced emails, so would it even have any effect? It would be a great place to put filters, though. Google could just make a new rules interface or maybe easier would be to add bounce actions to the filters to prevent the email from even landing in your inbox. It sure would suck to accidentally black list something important with it.
In your summary, you state that you get email from people who you _can_ contact and businesses you cannot. Why not let those people know you're getting additional emails and let them pass the information along or ask them for the correct address to forward to?
An e-mail not to me personally is spam. Off to the bit bucket. I once got a page when I was working for a 911 emergency dispatch center (database, with live GIS mapping, SCADA to control fire hall/ems printing, alerts, doors, erickson trunking radios, traffic lights, ANI/ALI spills from the phone company, hospital alerts, etc), and it wasn't for me, it was a lawyer to a client. I had the most hellish time telling this lawyer that the message I received was not likely for me. Just delete the invalid email and move on. Don't respond (in 99+% of cases, they know you aren't the intended recipient, but if you bite they hook you, this is how phishing, spear phishing and whaling works). I don't even fuss about it anymore. There is nothing life-and-death in an email unless you know them and can call them and talk to them. Otherwise, its all just noise.
There are a couple I get to my gmail account. Some of the earlier ones I actually was able to reply to and ask them them to correct their contact list and have their intended contact send me a message so I could forward other mail for him. He's sent a few of my errant messages to me as well. We just have a single letter swapped in our addresses so it happens somewhat frequently - we even type or own addresses wrong sometimes.
So, I'd say, get in touch with the intended recipients. Together you can make a plan of action and make sure that everyone is more careful with their addresses.
Other than this goofy issue, I've had no problems using Gmail. It's a great service.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I also have a pretty simple, short GMail address and I'm always getting emails for people with a similar name to mine. For regular people, I reply back. For bulk company stuff, I just try to unsubscribe.
In a few really annoying cases where I can't completely unsubscribe, I've reset people's password's, logged into their accounts and changed their email addresses. A couple times I changed their names to something like "Captain Dipshit".
call Intuit and ask to speak with the Cheif Information Security Officer. Explain what's happening, it will get fixed very quickly
It may be a problem on Google's end. I have my firstname.lastname@gmail.com but I occasionally get email dumped in that mailbox that is addressed to firstnamelastname@gmail.com [ sans the period between first and last name ].
sort of like a second anti-SPAM act
You realize that the CAN-SPAM Act was nothing of the sort. It was named CAN-SPAM because spammers CAN SPAM you with impunity.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
One friend of mine DoSed every mailserver which sent spam to him. It worked, he has almost no spam now.
The way I see it thats what filters are for.
Many commenters have said this already, I just wanted to add my vote. This applies to life as a whole, not just email - People will always try to pass on their problems to you. Don't accept the burden. Nothing good can come of it. You are not being nice and helpful, you are enabling their bad behavior. If an IRS agent sent me an email saying that I forgot a deduction, and would I mind if they just tacked it on to my return before sending out the refund check, I wouldn't bother spending all those hours checking my math next year.
usually i get tons of subscription emails for games. i just mark as spam.
One time i got a shipping confirmation for a webstore that does not have an email confirmation system. I just marked as spam.
Later that store send an email about failing to try to deliver 3 times at the given address. Marked as spam.
Once i started getting emails from some lady that was letting some guy with the same name use her apartment while she was out of town. Thankfully i saw those before my wife. ...or someone looking for empty apartments in the rich part of town to borrow stuff.
I don't think I have a common name.. but at a certain point I was getting mail for 2 different people with a similar name. The first guy I was nice about... I'd forward the messages and let him know.. or reply to the senders and let them know. With the second guy I was less kind... was just deleting that stuff. Once I got a conformation email for a rather long flight he'd just booked... so naturally I helped him out by changing the seat assignment to a middle seat in the back of the plane. Funny thing.. I didn't get anymore of his stuff after after that.
My name used to get emails all the time from the Veterans administration with medical records and all for a guy with the same name as me (I owned my name as a domain).. I contacted them and told them... they never did anything about it.. now I just filter them out.
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
I keep getting emails taunting me about biting peoples ears off and I just can't figure it out. I mean, are there really that many people named Miket Yson?
Especially when they tell you that firstlast@gmail.com equals exactly the same thing as first.last@gmail.com.
Gmail is full of shit on this one. They did indeed once upon a time in the not so distant past, issue distinctly different accounts with and without the dot. Mine is one of those cases. I have the gmail account in the firstlast@gmail format, and I personally know the other guy with the same unusual name as myself, who registered first.last@gmail about a year after I had my account. About 2 years ago I started getting all his email in my inbox, and he is now unable to access his gmail account, but I can now access his account if I use his account username and my password. He has since abandoned gmail altogether, and I just simply delete his email and mark it as spam, since it's pretty much all junkmail anyway.
My own gmail account got hacked a couple weeks ago by someone presumably from China (and I had a very complex, secure password), so it looks like I am probably going to abandon gmail as well myself, since they're rapidly becoming untrustable anymore. Too bad, it used to be a very good email account for me for many years until recently now that Google seems to have gone down the toilet with regard to security.
Why would you choose a webmail address that uses your real name? That's practically asking for trouble!
A few years back I started receiving email for another account to my account due to an ISP error. Some included pictures of band promos at radio stations. I was able to track down and forward the messages to the intended person, who was in the music industry. For thanks he shipped me a box of CDs. "No good deed goes unpunished" sometimes gets ignored by the universe.
...it happened to me once. I was in Kentucky and the intended recipient was in Iowa. Contacted the guy had a short conversation and discovered he was a first cousin twice removed of mine (son of my great-grandfather's brother) I'd never met.
I see a lot of comments from others to whom this has happened or is still happening.
It has never happened to me.
I think we need a new poll to see how common it is.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
I have the same problem but worse.
I was getting emails from an online bill paying systems from other country that aren't for me. My best guess is that the $%&"&!#$& guy didn't know his own fricking address and entered mine by mistake.
I got tired of reporting the issue so I finally decided to reset the site password (got the new pass by email), login, change the address and password to something random so I would never remember it and then logoff.
If people is stupid enough to type a wrong address in their homebanking account they deserve worse than that.
All the other emails I get that were for someone else, I'm just sending a reply telling the sender that the address is wrong and then I flag it as spam (using gmail).
If you do anything to correct the situation, you are reinforcing the bad behavior, and it will continue to happen with greater frequency.
You actually get punished more for trying to do the right thing.
You should just delete them, mark as spam, etc.
From a behavior stand point you would want to avoid reinforcing the behavior, and possibly also identify a way to punish the behavior -- one could do the wrong thing and publish them online, which might be a punishment (while probably technically legal, this behavior could increase the frequency with which you interact with lawyers).
In my case, someone has the same name modulo middle name, and his gmail is one character more than mine, so I get a few of their emails a month, at first I tried to respond to the sender, or forward them along, but it just kept happening so I now I delete them or mark them as spam.
The results you got suggest a large number of people who are truly clueless about email and the Internet. Might I suggest that in your initial "This isn't the website you're looking for" email, you provide a small note to the effect of "I reserve the right to post future correspondence from you publicly."
Then just do what The Pirate Bay does.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
My name is Lauren Smith, and my aunt is Laurie Smith (not our real last name). Don't ask why my parents did this...they apparantly thought it wouldn't be an issue. I get email from other family members all the time intended for her, and it's never anything other than annoying.
I've got the same problem with my gmail account. most I just delete silently. I seem to get a lot of grandparents email kids, to them I reply kindly that they have the wrong person, and to call their grandkids and request the address again.
some groups don't get it. I was in a group email for a dorm, and setup a filter to reply all when sent email from their college with " I don't go to your school, never have, I've asked repeatedly to be removed from this mailing list, you're all idiots" AFIAK, they got several dozen of these reply spams before they figured out how to remove me from their mailing list. sucks for them, easy enough for me. ;-)
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
http://www.mailwasher.net/ . It bounces this sort of stuff back as if the server itself had rejected it as "address does not exist". It won't get you off bots' lists, of course, but if there's a real person or company on the other end, they'll see the "delivery failed" notice, check into it, and find they have the wrong address.
I had this for months, it started to get out of control when the other person bought a bunch of stuff on HSN and I got all the invoices, shipping notices etc. Fortunately (or un-, depending on your viewpoint) they had shipping addresses in the emails. I wrote a direct but polite letter telling them that they are using the wrong address for everything. It really tapered off after that.
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
an email address has two (ish) parts. The fact that you have a common name covers the first part. The second part is your fault. You chose to share a domain name with millions of other people.
Why did you do that?
Get an address at a different domain name -- or one of your own for a whopping $10 annually, or less. And you problem will go away over-night.
Stop complaining about free services. The "free" part comes with sacrifices. You've found a great one. And by "great" I mean big.
I have a personal domain, where my email address is firstname@mydomain.example. Naturally, I get a bunch of spam, but the filters take care of that.
Occasionally I'll get seemingly-legitimate mail for individuals whose names are completely different from my own, yet the sender is evidently using user-entered email addresses. My first name, as my username implies, is "Pete", yet I've gotten mail to my personal account regarding, for example, a woman named Diane who scheduled a service appointment with an Apple Store in New York. The message had legitimately been sent by Apple. Diane had filled out the form on the Apple site and input my address in the email address field. Very odd.
If I was using a Gmail account, I could see someone with a similar name making such a slip, but getting both the username and the domain name completely wrong? I'm surprised that someone could be foolish enough to make such a mistake, but I am apparently underestimating the stupidity of some people.
> The big problem I am having is with companies and websites. These emails are often no-reply, which means I can't send back a quick note.
I've always thought that sending messages with invalid return addresses or with a return address that's routed to the functional equivalent of /dev/null is intolerably rude. In fact, I think sending a message with the intention of discarding any reply is pretty close to the maxiumum amount of disrespect you can show your message's recipient.
I have one message to the executives of companies that send email with 'no-reply' return addresses deserve to be faced with a boycott: If you're not interested in reading our replies, we're not interested in sending you any money either.
I don't think Microsoft Exchange addiction (as I've blogged on in the past, see my .signature) should count as an excuse either. Sending mail with a deliverable return address is a matter of a minimum of common courtesy and civilty.
-- That grumpy BSD guy - http://bsdly.blogspot.com/
I would have thought the "e-mail protocol" had an equivalent of "wrong address check box"... Isn't that the case? If not, why such an obvious thing was not included when the "protocol" was drafted?
Send a reply to abuse@whomeveremailedyou.com Most domains still have some sort of mailbox for this.
I'm using a semi-common name in my email address, and let me tell you, it gets a little annoying at time.
I have people apparently signing me up with email lists and website accounts (which invariably lead to more email lists). I've gotten emails from Victoria Secret, Build-a-bear Workshops, even some douche who is running for governor of Ohio. None of these sites asked for my permission to add me to their lists, so I just mark them all as spam. After a few months, Gmail tends to catch on and starts pushing them to my spam folder.
Most companies give a "this isn't my account" option when someone signs up, including Microsoft with their Live IDs. If it's a legit company, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and click it. Sony doesn't do this for some reason. Someone has signed me up for a PSN account. I get PSN emails. I can't do jack all about them; I contacted Sony support, they told me they would inform the person who signed up for the account. Nothing has happened.
On the fun side, I got a password that would let me RSVP for the "webby" awards, and I've had people mistake me for the CEO of some company which could lead to shenanigans if I were a lesser person.
A while back I started getting all sorts of e-mail for some idiot in Virgina when he went away to college. He like so many collage kids do, went out of control with out any direct supervision. It was a real nuisance my in-box would fill up with massive amounts of spam. He came from a fundamentalist religious family but he was in to hard core gay s&m porn had profiles on gay hook up sites and other bizarre things. First I stared getting his financial statements. I tried to be nice like I have never made a typo and emailed the card companion's contact address they threatened me for legal action intercepting his e-mail. That pissed me off and then the gay porn and hook up emails with pics started "insert Weiner joke here" I was sick of what I was getting i am no prude but this stuff was seriously nasty and the time it took to wade threw it to sift out my correspondents. So I made a distribution list of the originating addresses he had signed up for and forwarded all of that stuff to all of them. Forwarding all his e-mails to them and to each other with the note to the effect that he is not at this address after a couple of weeks there was a sudden decline when I forwarded a bunch to what I assumed was his mother. A few weeks later I got an apology note from his mom saying that they were very sorry for his behavior and he would now be taking a new direction with his life.
It is spam, treat them as spammers warn them once, and go after them with the CAN-SPAM act.
When assholes get hit with that first, they will back down real fast. They can bitch a little, but make sure that you have warned them in your initial message that responses would be regarded as SPAM as well. Remember they emailed you first.
I keep getting these emails from ICICI about DEMAT accounts. Whenever I respond and ask to correct the problem. I get a canned response asking about my particulars including amongst other things my cell phone and date of Birth ( Sighh...) I once had a daily back and forth for a week with a guy starting with a standard line " I beg your pardon... Anyway what worked for me was a custom filter taking all messages from ICICI straight into Trash.
...it seems obvious that you should legally change your common name to something less common and then get an email address that reflects the change. Problem solved =).
If your name is Jim Smith then there's a damn good chance some of those emails are my fault - and I never intended to receive them - sorry :)
Seriously, if you're name is common enough to be used a pseudonym for an anonymous person, it is entirely possible that the intended recipients never wanted the email in the first place.
At my last job we actually had women whose name was 'Anne Other' who kept receiving emails from people that had received form letters, with a standard* form letter name signed on them.
*I say standard, but I didn't know about it until this incident.
I have the same problem as the OP with random 5th graders constantly signing me up for mail lists or services when they forget their correct email address. Very very few of these lists are sending a confirmation email with a link used to confirm.
Boggles the mind.
My firstinitiallastname@gmail.com is common enough that I probably get mis-directed emails maybe 6-8 times a year. Same with my old yahoo.com email that I've had for many years now.
Occasionally I've replied back but honestly I don't think even once have I gotten a reply - a thank you or anything - that anything was done or that they were appreciative that I didn't just send their email into a black hole.
My feeling is the same as others - just don't bother to reply or try to be helpful. It ultimately strikes me as a big waste of time and effort trying to track someone down or be helpful. If the person sending the email did something wrong or the person that signed up for X or Y billing notification with the wrong email address, that's their problem, not yours and not your responsibility to deal with their mistake. Delete it and forget about it. If people send an email to the wrong address and never hear from that person if it's that important they'll call or text or meet that person and fix it. If they signed up for billing notifications with the wrong email address eventually it will hit them what they've done - especially if the service is shut off because they weren't aware of the billing, though honestly any sensible adult should know when their bills are due.
Might I suggest a more imaginative e-mail address?
Simply delete it. Or if there is enough of it set up Gmail to mark it as spam and trash it that way.
I was dealing with the same issue. I've had my Gmail account since Gmail first started handing out accounts. Then a couple of years ago someone over in England registered their own Gmail account and I'm guessing it is different from mine by one or two characters at the most. I wound up getting emails from this person's family, friends, etc. as well as e-mail confirmations for online purchases. I have responded to the friend's and family (including this person's own daughter) telling them they have the wrong person and would they please let that other person know that they are giving out the wrong e-mail address. It never stopped. So now, I don't give a FARK. I delete it. If they can't be bothered to get something as simple as an e-mail address correct, I can't be bothered to care enough to do something other than delete their mail.
I receive lots of these e-mails actually. One of the curses of having [First Initial][Lastname]@gmail.com with no trailing letters/numbers I guess. Usually I'll just write a curt reply about having the wrong e-mail address, but occasionally I'll mess with people:
Random Dude: I'm so sorry baby, please stop ignoring me.
Me: Fuck you, don't ever email me again.
Random Dude: I deserve that. But I still love you.
Me: If you really love me then you'll leave me alone.
Unfortunately there's no way to know what happened after that. Did he realize I wasn't who he thought? Did he get in an argument with his ex-lover about what they never wrote? Who knows. But this was by far the most unusual I think:
I actually left that one alone, until one day I got a friend request on Facebook when the sender apparently added her contact list from GMail. She turned out to be pretty cute too. I said, "Hey, I remember you! You're that girl who tried to send me pictures of your naughty bits." Which was quite the icebreaker.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The fact that they are sending you e-mails without giving you some way to inform them of a mistake is offensive. I don't worry too much about the guy who doesn't notice he has redirected all that automated email (maybe he even did it on purpose) - but the fact that companies set up mechanisms like this, where some innocent bystander gets continually annoyed through the companies actions tells me that the companies do not, in fact, give a shit about individuals.
My example: someone set up an ebay store to sell a product. They posted their email address correctly on the product page, but apparently mistyped it when they entered it for eBay and Paypal.de
So every time someone tried to purchase their product, I got emails from eBay and Paypal. in German. Sometimes I got emails with banking information, reminding me to accept money transfers and send people products.
ebay and paypal customer service were useless. They couldn't do anything because I was not the rightful account owner. (Paypal kept telling me that paypal.de wasn't even associated with them, and that this was just a phishing attempt). There was no mechanism to get them to stop sending me emails, even after I informed them that I considered it harrassment (a problem in SPAM rules, or just a big corporation Not Giving a Shit?). They informed me that they could see that I was not in fact the seller, but that since only the valid account holder could make changes to the contact information, their hands were tied. Nobody who has actual decision-making authority or the cleverness to fix the problem seems to exist at Paypal.
I sent emails to the correct email address for the person, but never got a response. I got to the point where I would send a form-email to the buyer, informing them of the situation and my opinion of the idiots. It mostly went away, but about every 3 months someone new tries to buy the product, and I get emails from the buyer, ebay, and paypal (plus reminders to update my account info) all over again.
For a while I considered using the "i forgot my password" link (since the new password would be sent to MY email anyway), logging in and changing the account information myself, then maybe or maybe not emailing the person and telling them the new password to get into their account - but I'm pretty sure some overzealous TLA would go after me for "hacking," and there are no Self-Defense exceptions to the hacking rules.
I think the rule ought to be that if a company keeps sending me email after I have informed them I do not want email (and easy to use contact information supplied with the email), that a complaint to the ISP ought to disconnect them. 3 strikes and all that? If I as an individual kept contacting a business after being told to stop, they would certainly want me to be prosecuted.
I can't believe no one suggested this. Get you own domain name. They are like $8. Then, you can create a google for domains gmail account that uses your own domain but through the gmail system. You post to slashdot, surely you can figure this out right? Forward your old address, and phase it out. Since you'll use your own domain, it will definitely be unique to you.
Delete it and if it really bothers that much you that you're getting other people's email, then go get yourself a life too.
This happens to me on a daily basis. I've called insurance companies, cable companies and Sirius/XM, power companies - the list goes on and on. The real problem is that there is somebody out there, if not multiple people, that thinks my e-mail address is his. He gives it out and signs up for very important things using it. All I can do is unsubscribe as much as possible and try to call the companies which send me his account number. He has on multiple occasions activated the Gmail Lost Password function, which texts MY PHONE a recovery code.
I've not got a massively popular surname, but thanks to having a FirstInitialSurname@gmail account, I get tons of the stuff.
I've had the following:
- Job offer for the Vice President of Communications (ha!) for the Carlyle Group
- Invoices from storage companies
- Bills from Qwest Communications which unbelievably include a temporary username/password to log into the customer's account, imagine the fun to be had here
- Party invitations
- Bank statements
- Random email conversations that I have been CC'd into
- Pictures sent from mobile phones (usually by the owner to what they think is their email address)
Occasionally I email back, but most of the time I don't bother - it's their own damn fault.
Another pet hate of mine is those stupid fucking disclaimers at the bottom of emails sent from companies.
They usually bang on about "if this email has been sent in error you agree to delete it and inform the sender and must not disclose the contents to a third party... " etc.
Yeah right...what a load of bollocks.
I'm not a lawyer but I'm betting that virtually all of this junk is legally unenforceable because to enter into any kind of agreement or legal contract you have to agree to it first - that's why it's called an agreement...
Email sent by mistake can be considered the same as spam - unsolicited email.
Is JSmith@gmail.com really that different then 867-5309?
I've been having this issue for ages. I've gotten a few pretty amazing mis-addressed picture messages (one was a cake frosted like the wheel of fortune that said "Wheel of Yum!"
I've also had issues of people creating profiles on personals sites, where i've had a little fun and tried to leave notes in their profile to have them fix their email issues.
My favorite was a PTA in San Antonio that did not use a real listserv and simply pasted everyone's email addresses into the To: field. I replied many many times to ask to be taken off their list to no avail. One night an email went out asking for someone to cater a PTA function the next month. A friend suggested that I respond saying "Catering will be completely taken care of, don't worry about it".
Never got another email. But i'm sure some mother was horribly scorned.
Is that you, Anthony Weiner?
Hell, if you get any info at all use it to steal their identity. Then using the new credit card in their name buy that house in Fiji. Now you just need passage on a ship and you're golden.
It sucks, but I got tired of a similar situation.
I was getting weird pictures of women's ultrasounds and all kinds of weird gmail conversations between these womens groups. I eventually gave up and decided that I'd rather have a unique domain that makes it impossible to get email for common.name@gmail.com, etc.
If you do that, you can have it hosted by google. So you get access to their gmail interface and google apps just the same as the other google users. Except now there's a 10 user limit for free services. But whatever. You can host it for your family.
With regards to the angry responses the others got, I had similar experience when i tried to correct it. Some home I was the bad person because someone else mis-typed. Remember, "No good deed goes unpunished."
When I signed up for GMail, I found that myname@gmail.com was taken so I tried my.name@gmail.com and sure enough, it worked. I know that other people had the same experience because one day I found a thread on google help talking about it, and the OP specifically wondering what ever happened to the hypothetical 'myname@gmail.com' accounts when the period was eliminated as a recognized character.
Unfortunately for the OP, a bunch of people mistook his query for complaints they had - basically, the same complaint as in this thread: that 'other people's' mail was being mis-delivered to them - along with demands for google to 'fix it' and make these incorrectly addressed emails stop.
The OP's question was completely lost and at least a couple Google 'experts' and one actual employee of google got involved in the most ridiculous argument I've ever seen: basically, the OP and a couple others who understood the question were swatting idiots like flies, while the Google people followed along with the hijackers and totally derailed the thread.
I guess my point is that google 'experts' are far from it and that their employees should probably not deal with the public either. Google Help is not helpful if you're not a drooling idiot. IMNSHO. So my advice is to start a thread in Google Help and see what happens.
Change your name to Abdullah Venkatasubramanian Grigorchuk Jäätteenmäki Chang. Trust me, there's no one else in the world with this name.
If I can't email them back about the problem, I create a filter to delete all further emails from that specific address.
At home, I use internet via a 3G modem. Apparently, the number assigned to my USB modem was in use before -- someone keeps sending texts there with "Oi! How you doin'"-alike messages. Which is hilarious. And easily ignored :)
(it became less funny when the connection went sour, and the telco tried to call me. On my usb stick. Then they sent a text that they couldn't reach me. Again, to my usb stick. Note: I'm not in the habit of reading texts sent to my usb stick...)
I have the same problem. I finally sorted it out today with ATT UVerse when someone used my email address when signing up. I had the person's full address, phone number, and account number. I called ATT and after talking with several people, I was finally able to get them to remove my email address from the UVerse account record. I had a similar incident recently when I received an electronic copy of a receipt for a propane purchase in a State a thousand miles from me. Not much I can do about this except ignore it.
For better or worse, whenever I get one of these I use the password reset and change the password to garbage on the offending site. Usually someone has just set up a new account on some website, now they can do it again and will have to do it correctly. Never gotten anything important/confidential, just annoying Welcome to our Site junk.
Just because a lot of people seem to advocate silently tossing the email, or replying with intent to confuse... I once got an email asking me to confirm details for a wedding (cake? Don't remember). Of course I responded! Think of the consequences of just dropping all incorrect emails. Arguably people shouldn't send critical information by email (hah!). Perhaps you can get sued (USA! Hah!). Yes, it may cost you some time to clear it out (yet you're wasting time on slashdot?).
Some mail clients (Mac Mail.app for one) will generate an SMTP non-delivery report for you - if you look at the mail and determine it to be spam, you can select a menu option to bounce it. No idea whether you can set up something to refuse delivery altogether (which would be better), but at least a bounce ought to get someone's attention on the sending side.
You could avoid most of these emails in the first place by changing your email address. There's no law that requires your email to be of the form .. Use something entirely different, or give yourself, for email purposes, an uncommon middle name. John.Smith@gmail.com is going to get a lot of mail; Abdullah.Suzuki.Cohen@gmail.com is not.
The reason for having to spoof as a facebook friend when you get looped in is to get your e-mail read.
Most times even "Wrong Email Address" in a subject line will be deleted as spam.
If you have a MAC and their mail app you can "bounce to sender" so it will seem like the email is invalid. Maybe if your lucky they will eventually remove it from their database. ... Or you could always think about changing your name :-)
http://email.about.com/od/macosxmailtips/qt/How_to_Bounce_a_Message_to_the_Sender_with_Mac_OS_X_Mail.htm
I enter random email addresses at work whenever some software wants an email address, so they can send me spam no doubt.
Now, I just reply with "It's an emergency, please call me. I can't talk over email for legal reasons." I figure that's the best way to get them to actually reach out to him in person.
I used to track down the people who were using my address and set them right. I took a certain delight in contacting people and saying "You don't know me, but you're using my email address and you should stop." In fact, I have an amusing story about it.
Years ago, my home email address was [my first name]@[big isp].net. This was around 10 years ago, and fairly often someone with the same first name as me would sign up and merrily start handing out my email address.
One day I logged in and check my email, and find several email messages clearly meant for someone else. Included in the messages were receipts from online shops, which included the other man's home address, though not his phone number. At first I wasn't going to do anything about it, but then I found a message from a gentleman that this other person had met at a gay bar.
I didn't mind that someone was giving my email address to various vendors online, but now it was a little more personal, so I took action.
Having the person's street address, I tried the phone directory, but found that his home number was unlisted. So I called a friend of mine who worked at a law firm, and asked them if they could do any searches on scary privacy-invading databases and get the man's home phone number. My friend couldn't promise anything, saying "unlisted phone numbers can be pretty hard to get".
A couple hours later my friend called me back. "His number is unlisted, and I couldn't get it. But his wife's number was pretty easy to find."
I called the number and left a message "This message is for [first name]; you've been using my email address, and given the sensitive nature of the email messages I've been getting, you probably don't want to do that."
The misdirected emails stopped immediately.
I got my gmail address when it was in beta if I recall correctly. It is therefore a simple one like name@gmail.com. On top of that it is a very common name in a European country. I thought it was great to have that gmail address till I started getting all sorts of email meant for another person..then another...I just mark as spam and filter. No problem. Not my worry. Simple solutions for simple problems.
I've been having this problem for a while too, my email address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com, I've had the odd credit card statement, mobile phone bill, personal email, but recently I've been getting a lot of emails from people involved in a £44,000,000 supercomputer project, nothing interesting in them, mainly emails from the people involved talking about marketing and business plans and some people from Microsoft and Fujitsu emailing back and forth. At first I just ignored and deleted them, but as they kept going I've started replying to them to let them know (and asking if they had any jobs going) which seems to have stopped most of them, but I'm still getting the odd one.
Normally I just delete and report spam, but if I get the feeling somebody's going to be really missing out (and I have the time) I'll reply to them, my best one yet was somebody from Australia (I'm from the UK) emailing me a lot of high res photos asking me who I wanted as a lap dancer for my stag night, that certainly brightened up my morning.
I've had a few hotel reservations with links to reschedule or cancel them, I've been quite tempted by those links just to teach somebody to remember their own email address.
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
fdsafasdfasdfasdfasd@gmail.com
Technical details of permanent failure:
The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try double-checking the recipient's email address for typos or unnecessary spaces. Learn more at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6596
I bought an early gmail invite on ebay and scored my last name. It's it's not common...unless you're in Hungary, where it's the equivalent of "Smith".
All the spam: deleted.
All the stuff from "no reply" accounts where somebody with the same last name thought my email address was theirs: deleted.
The occasional item that looks like no kidding news of importance something somebody really should know about (over the years it has included deaths in the family, suicidal relatives, travel plans, job offers, real estate contracts and tax returns): i shoot a note to the sender and invite them to double check.
For the longest time I was in on the wine-tastings, car-customizing, antique-buying, charitable fund raising and investment meetings of some very wealthy people in southern California. Loved looking at the houses whose addresses where listed on Google maps. Big damned places...one of them next to a fucking polo field. The very rich are different indeed...
After several months of deleting this guy's emails, I get one that is showing a confirmation of renting a car at an Enterprise location here. So I call them up and say "Mr. So and So will be picking up a car at 5:30, correct?" They confirmed, so I said "Tell him to stop using my email address for all of his shit. I'm sick of deleting everything that's meant for him." "Yes, sir!" Not an email was received afterwards
Let the person these emails are supposed to be going to know that it happens a lot so they can correct it...
This is a sure way to invite grief. Most of the time it will turn out fine, but that other time you will have found yourself a world-class jerk. The only way to protect yourself will be to change your name, get a new e-mail address, cancel your credit cards, change your fingerprints, shoot your dog, and move to a new planet. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; don't give anyone free cobblestones.
For a while I was receiving the Sprint wireless bill and Amazon orders for some guy. He never paid his Sprint bill and eventually it got up to over $500. I think they finally closed his account so I stopped getting those. For Amazon, I changed his password and closed his account. His credit card was on file, so I could have been a lot more malicious, but fortunately for him, I generally try to be a nice person. As far as these types of emails go, I get at least a few every week. It's pretty remarkable how many people don't know what their own email address is.
They range from California to Chicago to Canada to Singapore. 10 emails trying to confirm a cable installation appointment. Check your email address instead of taking the remembered form data! Microcenter pamphlets for stores that are several hundred miles away. The one in Singapore was trying to buy a car, and luckily, I was able to google enough to find him on Facebook. Various university buds trying to reach their buddy (and still keep managing to send me email...).
I really wish that Gmail offered a bounce option.
Bryan
I have the same problem. My email address is drMyLastName@gmail.com. Doesn't happen too often but when it does the mistaken emails can be quite interesting. DR is actually just my initials but I try to help by giving advice whenever I can.
lots of spammers will sort their address list alphabetically, put one or two victims in the to field and a bunch more in the bcc field. then you'll get email that seems to have been sent to another address that looks very similar to yours.
That's news right there if it's true.
What evidence do you have that someone else got into your Gmail account?
Anyone else have evidence someone else has just started getting into their Gmail account with authorization?
Simply don't worry about it. They're obviously trying to get around their bills or something else by giving out fake info. If it was someone at a company just guessing at email addresses, just email their boss, or some other senior member at the company, and let them know that "you just had your identity stolen by their employee" and you're really scared and angry or something. Acting really confused and ignorant when talking to such people is great, it'll get you the entire world. I'd even start a website and just post all the mail that wasn't mine for laughs. Also, that's cool that you have such a common name, I can't count how many times I've seen different (profane) pronounciations and spellings of my last name. Bonus tip: Selective disinformation. Most data entry fields such as name, email, address, etc, aren't case sensitive, and the case is hardly ever normalized or otherwise looked at, even if a person notices. Use odd capitilazation when filling in your email address, you can tell which ones are actually yours. I've caught many unsolicited spammers that way.
If you often get emails for one specific person then you could go to the effort of finding their address. If you've got a common name and get emails for various different people then I'd just delete them.
If you have such a common name, stop using it as your email address.
Use a unique address and the problems vanish.
You're wrong, that _IS_ spam.
It is unsolicited commercial email, the dictionary definition of Spam.
A mistaken or mistyped email is not carte blanc for you to send unsolicited advertising to people. The Advertising law in this nation is very _VERY_ clear about this.
Kogan sends me marketing material because I opted into that. Singapore Airlines sends me marketing material because I signed up to their mailing list, Flight Centre _DOES NOT_ send me marketing material because I have not opted into their marketing list. I'm assuming you see the connection here.
If you did this to me, I wouldn't flame you via email, I'd report you to ACMA. You should be very grateful none of your victims have been this smart.
If I mistakenly email you, this does not give you rights to spam me. I have still not solicited you for anything thus any commercial email is still unsolicited.
I do get someone else's mail occasionally because there is a south African woman with a similar Gmail address to me (For example, I'm BDawson@gmail and she is BDawson1@gmail). I've taken the liberty of notifying the sender that the address used was incorrect and just deleted the message, which is what you should do.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If you think your gmail has a period in the username, then your email is wrong. Gmail doesn't differentiate; it ignores periods, so your.name@gmail.com=yourname@gmail.com. someone else is probably getting your emails.
Be careful your identity wasn't stolen.
I may be an aspiring life coach. I recommend following if this horrible situation of receiving someone else email ever happens to you:
1. Throw your laptop against a brick wall.
2. Pickup the pieces and dispose in a trash can.
3. Get a fucking life.
My gmail account seems to attract this stuff and, obliging fellow that I am, I prefer to return the emails pointing out their mistake and even suggesting the correct address to try. But a US company director kept sending confidential stuff to a consultant which was actually my email address and included heaps of very confidential file attachments. I sent back multiple emails trying to get them to look at where they were sending this stuff, until finally I copied and pasted their own email disclaimer, highlighted the part for them that said "advise us if you receive this in error" and said FFS read your own words!
That finally got their attention, and the issue was passed to one of their VP's who was full of fear at first, but when he found I'm not a US citizen he relaxed a little and we focused on resolving the issue. He had '"fear-of-lawsuit" written all over his emails until he relaxed, but I think that whole process took about 3 years.
I have the same problem. I have responded to some messages in the past, but I finally gave up under the shear number of bogus messages. (My account gets used as a fake registration address for lots of people.) My solution was to homebrew a blacklisted-by-default filtering setup using Gmail's underwhelming "filters".
Every unsolicited message gets a response from my account telling them they have been disregarded. They also get instructions on how to request access (by putting a custom string in the subject field). I pre-loaded my wife and immediate family in, as well as some other important senders. Everyone else needs to demonstrate that their messages are worth my time by responding to my message.
Hopefully this will stem the tide. At the very least, the filters hide the unwanted junk. If a mistyped email comes from a human, they will be notified by my response email that something is up. Hopefully they can figure out what they did wrong. For all the accounts registered to my email address? I can still just reset their passwords or have their accounts deleted, if the mail keeps coming in. So far it has only come to that once.
People love to think their email address is @ my domain. I reported one guy to facebook and he kept signing up. I got tired of dealing with it and I get invites to all kinds of stuff all written in italian. One guy signed up on cupid.com, now that has been interesting :P
It's annoying and has been for years. Now I usually just delete them. Sometimes I will reply depending on the email. But yeah it would be cool if there was a way to stamp it "return to sender, no one by that name at this address" like you do snail mail.
Karma, We don't need no stinkin' karma!
Shrink wrap licenses are legally binding contracts in the US, at least in the 7th Cir.
What Zeidenberg proves is that a button asking a party to agree to terms is a valid offer and that a mouse-click on that button constitutes a valid acceptance sufficient to form a binding contract. It is, in my opinon, an unremarkable result. Moreover it is a result based on facts are pertiently distinguished from the present case.
[I realise you were probably only disabusing the parent as to his/her comment re shrink-wrap licenses, but to the veer back onto topic ...]
In the present case the mail is unsolicited; it is fetched from a mail server without any specific human intervention; and -most importantly -the statement purporting to impose a contractual obligation on the reader of the email is evident only after the mouse-click to open the mail has been made. Quite apart from the question of what consideration might flow to the reader of an unsolicited email (upon which the putative contract might also fail) there has been no acceptance of any agreement by the reader of the mail sufficient to impose upon the reader an obligation to "destroy all copies this email."
Next we must turn to the issue of whether there exists any statutory provision, over and above contract law, which may impose such an obligation upon the reader. ...
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
There is a spam button, use it.
Dump it! For heaven's sake, throw it away as soon as you realize, it's not for you. As a long term mail server admin, it's the only advise I could give you. Whatever else you might do only makes you appear as the one who causes "that email trouble". You might get sued, assaulted, blamed distrusted but nobody would ever thank you for being honest. .
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Just delete these emails. Create a filter, make sure you're not storing stuff anywhere, and leave it be.
One big problem with that with gmail the emails are never really deleted and are always still linked to your account.
In the days of letters, such a mistake would get the letter 'returned to sender'. The letter would not be opened, or altered in any way but the postage required to forward it.
Doing this would solve your problem. Spammers would then be obvious, and people would instantly understand.
Replying, or using addresses gleaned from the emails is just creepy. If you got someone else's postal mail you wouldn't steam it open, find out who Grandma is, and then send her a letter!
But it is even worse, in that the guy for whom most of the email is intended uses mailto.firstnamelastname@gmail.com and probably half the clients in use just try to be nice and turn that into a mailto: hyperlink. After emailing him multiple times, I started to get rude responses about how this is my problem and not his. I know all about his legal issues, his health issues, his messy divorce, and some stuff I bet his soon to be ex-wife would lurve to know.
Delete them, no response, no other recourse.
Good luck fellow sufferer.
Apparently there is someone out there with the same name but decided to be firstlast instead (probably because I took the dot) and I'm guessing they're fine with using it as a login. However, all email that goes to firstlast ends up going into my inbox.
I was good for a while pointing this out to some people (especially when he must have had a date and the girl emailed him to thank him afterwards), but realized that the missing dot is translated to my address which is either a good or bad thing.. not sure. I just ignore and delete firstlast's emails now.
Of course, we could come to a solution for this if gmail had some kind of support email address...
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
If there really is a guy out there with bobsmith@smith.com or another variation (bob@smithco.com, etc)? When some site wants an email address from me for seeing a report or downloading a file, I give that email address. This poor guy has ended up on countless email lists for things that he has nothing do do with, unless he has the same career as me.
You question got me thinking about this. I need to come up with something better to use that will validate as an email but be very unlikely to be someone's actual address.
I have a similar problem. My e-mail address is first initial last name @ gmail.com, i.e. jsmith@gmail.com. There is a doctor in Canada that has the exact same name. His e-mail address is the same thing, but he duplicated the last letter, i.e. jsmithh@gmail.com. He is on the board for a church of some sort because I constantly get mail from people about things related to his church. I also get medical related e-mails, mostly stuff about conferences, etc...nothing patient related. I did a Google of my e-mail address and found out that the hospital where he works has an online directory and they had my e-mail address published under his name. I e-mailed them 2 or 3 times over the course of as many weeks explaining their error and asking them to fix it. I received no response. So then I did a whois on the domain and repeated the process with the domain contact. I think it took three e-mails before I finally received a response, and to be fair they did apologize and fix the problem. The big problem is that when the guy gives out his e-mail address, people glance at it and assume it is his first initial and last name, they miss the extra letter at the end. So I e-mailed the guy and told him I was getting a bunch of his mail and suggested that he might want to think about changing to an easier to read e-mail address (after all based on the time this started happening, I'm guessing that I've had my gmail account a lot longer than he's had his). I never received a response from him. So for a while I would forward messages intended for him to his correct e-mail address, but after about a year I got tired of doing it. So I e-mailed him and said that I was just going to start deleting the misdirected e-mails because I was tired of dealing with his mail. I still get stuff for him and just delete it now. He's missing a ton of mail, and I guess he doesn't care. Some people just don't care it seems.