Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Have You Ever Gotten Someone Else's Email? (ieee.org)
Wave723 shares an article from IEEE's Spectrum:
I was scrolling through emails on my phone one recent morning when a strange message appeared among the usual mix of advertisements and morning newsletters. It was a confirmation for an upcoming doctor's appointment in New York City, but came from an address I'd never seen before. And at the top, there was a friendly note: "I guess this is for you :)" The note, I would later learn, was written by a Norwegian named Andre Nordum whose email address is just a few letters different from my own... he'd Googled my name to try to track down my personal email address and forward the message to me.
All day, I thought about Andre's act of digital kindness and the heartwarming fact that a stranger had spent time and effort trying to send me a bit of important information. I also felt a twinge of guilt: I'd received emails in the past -- from car dealerships and daycares -- that were clearly meant for other people, and I'd never forwarded any of them along.
The 33-year-old Norwegian banker later joked that he did it because "I did not want to get emails about your dermatology history for the foreseeable future." But another Norwegian has been returning mis-directed emails for over a decade with mundane stories about the family dog and games of pickleball -- meant for another E. Nordrum.
"It's a little bit like sitting on the bus or overhearing somebody in the restaurant or something," he says, admitting that when they finally stopped coming, "I was a little bit sad, actually." In 2017 the other E. Nordrum flew from America to Norway on a vacation, finally meeting the man who'd been returning all his mis-addressed emails -- and they ended up talking for hours.
The article calls it a reminder "of how downright pleasant it can sometimes be to interact with strangers on the Internet." But it also asks an interesting question: "Do these email mix-ups happen to everyone? " I know I'm still getting emails about a storage space somebody opened 1300 miles away. And Slashdot reader antdude writes, "A few days ago, I got an USC.edu's doctor email (CCed with a few other people) about an upcoming surgery for a transplant. I was like huh?"
How about the rest of Slashdot's readers. Have you ever gotten someone else's email?
All day, I thought about Andre's act of digital kindness and the heartwarming fact that a stranger had spent time and effort trying to send me a bit of important information. I also felt a twinge of guilt: I'd received emails in the past -- from car dealerships and daycares -- that were clearly meant for other people, and I'd never forwarded any of them along.
The 33-year-old Norwegian banker later joked that he did it because "I did not want to get emails about your dermatology history for the foreseeable future." But another Norwegian has been returning mis-directed emails for over a decade with mundane stories about the family dog and games of pickleball -- meant for another E. Nordrum.
"It's a little bit like sitting on the bus or overhearing somebody in the restaurant or something," he says, admitting that when they finally stopped coming, "I was a little bit sad, actually." In 2017 the other E. Nordrum flew from America to Norway on a vacation, finally meeting the man who'd been returning all his mis-addressed emails -- and they ended up talking for hours.
The article calls it a reminder "of how downright pleasant it can sometimes be to interact with strangers on the Internet." But it also asks an interesting question: "Do these email mix-ups happen to everyone? " I know I'm still getting emails about a storage space somebody opened 1300 miles away. And Slashdot reader antdude writes, "A few days ago, I got an USC.edu's doctor email (CCed with a few other people) about an upcoming surgery for a transplant. I was like huh?"
How about the rest of Slashdot's readers. Have you ever gotten someone else's email?
I've had some amusing text conversations with wrong numbers (both by me and others). Turns out most people have a sense of humor.
My mother signed up for GMail back in 2004 and got her firstname.lastname@gmail.com.
Two years ago she began getting unsolicited "link your Google account!" and UPS delivery notifications for someone with (apparently) the same name--and very poor typing skills--in the Bronx. (We live in the Pacific Northwest.) No big deal.
Then the Pinterest, LinkedIn and Facebook messages came. And the Craigslist ad responses. And the diet program e-mail. And the online purchase notifications. And a hundred coupon and bank loan things. I cannot believe how much mail this person must be missing. They must think e-mail is a terribly unreliable medium. (It is, of course, but not for this reason.)
There was nothing we could do but get her a new e-mail address. Now she's a happy FastMail customer.
I have (my) firstname.lastname@gmail.com. I've never run across anyone else with the same name as me in person, but apparently we all use Gmail (except for the guy who works for GM and has firstname.lastname@gm.com.) I get someone else's email at least every couple weeks; insurance quotes, receipts for online orders, medical records, overdue library books, band practice times, etc etc etc. I actually have a form letter:
> I don’t know who you are. You have reached the wrong Firstname Lastname, regardless of if you originally emailed firstnamelastname@gmail.com or firstname.lastname@gmail.com
> Long story short, firstnamelastname@gmail.com and firstname.lastname@gmail.com are the same email address as far as Gmail is concerned. They are both delivered to me. This is my least favorite Gmail feature. Please remove both from any mailing list you might operate. I suspect your Firstname Lastname has a middle initial somewhere in their address that they forgot to give you.
> Please see this support article from Google for more information: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en
I keep getting emails that are clearly meant for some prince living in Nigeria or something.
The funniest part is, I forward his emails to the Publishers Clearing House!
#DeleteFacebook
My Gmail address is in the format of firstname.lastname, and unfortunately not everyone who shares my first and last names or knows someone who does realizes that it doesn't belong to them. Sometimes it's a missed middle initial, sometimes it's pure ignorance on the part of the person providing the address. I think sometimes people give it as a fake address, and I have contempt for these people.
I have received all kinds of emails for wedding invitations, human resource confidential data, billing, mortgages, and more.
If the sender is a personal address, I respond with a polite correction. If it's important billing information (ie, "service about to expire for non-payment"), I do what I can to make contact to the correct person so they can be aware. I'm amazed at how few responses I get, and out of the few responses I get I'm amazed at how many people seem to resent me trying to be helpful.
Facebook doesn't authenticate email addresses you put in. I've been getting notifications for some Mexican dude for years about every little comment he gets on FB.
At one point, I received some emails intended for the CEO of some Chinese company. They had a bunch of financial reports in them about things I couldn't understand. That was fun.
However, the worst reason why I get e-mails addressed to somebody else in my personal account is due to Google ignoring dots in e-mail addresses, so myemail@gmail.com, my.email@gmail.com and m.y.e.m.a.i.l@gmail.com are the same. I am getting e-mail for somebody that is at least 3k miles away, including a Walmart and Victoria Secret mailing lists. And reservation tickets for flights.
I actively unsubscribe them from whatever service is sending me the email
If it comes from a human (Aunt Sally for instance), I have an Outlook macro that generates a fairly convincing bounce message. That normally works. For the more persistent aunts, I will loop the macro so it sends them 3 dozen bounces for every one incoming misdirected email. They wither soon after.
Occasionally it's something like a new dropbox account or the like. I'll sign in, change the email to a disposable address (e.g., mailinator), confirm the account change, change the password to random gibberish and logout.
Ah, technology.
For several years I was getting e-mail intended for someone else with almost the same name as me (first, last, middle initial) and whose email address was identical except it was lacking delineators, but on the opposite end of the country. All of the messages were commercial in nature. I did some investigating and quickly found an obituary for the guy, so it was left to me to tell these businesses to stop e-mailing me because the customer they were trying to court was dead.
Much much earlier, I found a distant relative (confirmed via family trees) who had my exact name. Not long after that I tried to sign up for and AOL Instant Messenger account (yes, it was THAT long ago) and discovered that he had already gotten an account with our shared name! I had to misspell my name, dammit.
Whoever owns @test.com must earn a lot of money from selling all the information that goes to their catch-all inbox.
I have a pretty rare name and internet alias, which I use in my email addresses, and since I got my own internet connection about 19 years ago, I can't recall ever having gotten someone else's mail, or my own mail forwarded to me from someone else.
Most recently someone signed up for ebay using my email address. Same as others, firstname.lastname@gmail.com, Iâ(TM)m in the US.
To date:
Two different people using it to sign up for their three account in the UK
One landscaping quote in the UK
Three golf course reservations in the UK
Multiple airline ticket confirmations from all over
Emails asking for follow up in person interviews in the US and UK
For the interview emails Iâ(TM)ve responded saying that whoever they interviewed they gave the wrong email address, and received thank you notes.
At this point I get about an equal amount of mail for myself as for other people. Iâ(TM)ve tried sorting it out, but three only does customer support over twitter, and never fixed the first account when I DMâ(TM)d them. For EBay I never responded to the âoeverify my accountâ email, but that didnâ(TM)t seem to matter.
When I worked for a government contractor, I sometimes got emails from people in the USAF who were trying to reach someone with my same first and last name who worked at a USAF base. Sometimes the emails contained information which was unclassified, but was clearly not something that they wanted to be public. I told the sender that I wasn't the droid they were looking for, and also let our infosec guys know.
I have a five character gmail address that is both a common first and last name. I get misdirected emails every day. So far I have gotten emails for:
* Companies (same name)
* Doctors.
* Sons, daughters, dads, etc.
* Contract details.
* Job offers.
* Politicians.
Sometimes I reply politely and let them know of the error. Sometimes I play games to see whats the most crazy thing I can rely and get people to believe (only to update later and let them know).
Once, when I was email responsible (-90's). Our ISP sent email to admin (me) because of their fault. Horrible, I hated it, the real recipient hated it, ... really horrible.
I have a domain name similar to a financial company and every month or two someone sends an email to me instead of their broker. Sometimes I respond, but often I delete it without bothering to read the email.
Working for a big tech company a few years back, a person quite senior decided to leave and set up a discussion list (intended for a single use) to say good bye to everyone he'd ever worked with over the past... 21 years I think, it had people both high and low, co-founders & current CEO to rank and file... and correctly ACLed to only let him send to it.
A few months after he left, someone external (to the company) accidentally CCed that very same DL (never heard if it was similar to something they meant to include), but the external thread, shared with several thousand people at another company did contain some sensitive (to them) information which went on for a few messages, of course resulting in the normal Bedlam result of like "Remove me" "Remove me too!" style responses.
Turns out the ACLs on the DL had expired upon his corporate account, and it was only a matter of time until someone accidentally (or deliberately) hit it.
This also happens with the fun of email address reuse. At that same company, I received notification of credit card statement updates and playgroups from a few different people/companies, as the previous owner of the (work) address had used it for quite a few personal things. Thankfully I was nice and would reply with "____ no longer works here, nor has access to this address, so I'm afraid I cannot pass along your message'.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Ever since switching to my own domain several years ago, I haven't received a single e-mail intended for someone else. It used to happen with my Gmail account on occasion, but even then it was relatively rare for me, given that I'm the only person in the world with my first and last name.
My email is my last name at gmail.com (doe@gmail.com - not real address). So I get Jerry Doe's paycheck statements from UK, Jane Doe's hairdresser appointments from San Francisco, Jesse Doe's phone bills from Germany, and Jake Doe's students keep asking me how they did on the exam (invariably bad). Oh and a collection company tried to collect Jeb Doe's dept from me. Strangely enough the company that sends the paychecks and the phone company do not validate the e-mail addresses of their customers/employees and do not not have a contact or a link in the email trough which I can alert them about the problem (these email are send from do-not-reply-to addresses). Neither does the Jane Doe's hairdresser, so I randomly cancel her appointments from time to time (the email has a convenient link for that). Hopefully this will create some excitement in her life and alert her to the problem.
My main mail-adresses have all have the trait that they are
a) easy to memorise
b) easy to pronounce
c) easy to understand
d) easy to spell out correctly
e) compareatively rare/unusual
My last name has the exact same traits and I have a domain that is my last name.
On the plus side, I maybe get 5 e-mails per week on my main account that I have had for 18 years now.
So no, I haven't gotten somebody elses email. Maybe once a decade or two back. But generally no.
But I do understand that there are people/names/addresses to whom this happens way more often. Obviously.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Got their write-ups about their congregation for a few years. Laughed a lot. Finally did a reply all telling them to double-check who they are sending to. No reply to my email sadly.
Be Excellent To Each Other
Apparently, someone mistyped their gmail recovery email to my address. The guy probably sent a couple dozen recovery emails to my address. He may have been on the level, but I wasn't going to reply.
I received the approval for a €1.5 million mortgage, including proof of income etc.
It was mend for a doctor with my first name as his last name and I have an alias mail address with just my first name, in his case there should be a first name in front of the last name.
Interesting to see how well some people are doing but then I send it back to the bank who apologised.
For years I had been trying to get that nice and short mail address but it was already in use until one day it was available and I immediately claimed it. Later I heard my ISP locks released account names for 12 months before handing them out again.
Not much later I was receiving commercial mails on my newly acquired address, one of them from a travel agency.
Out of curiosity I followed the link in the mail to the account on the travel website but it required a password, I clicked the 'Forgotten password' link and received a new one.
Once in the account I saw an address in Amsterdam where the man was living and also noticed it allowed booking of flights, hotels etc against a credit card associated with the account, scary!
Again a little later I received a personal invitation to some event, I replied explaining I was not the person that previously used the mail address.
This time I received a reply including the new mail address of the guy and I could finally report to him that his travel account was dangerously open...
He told me he had forgotten this one and I handed him the new password and all was good.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I have had some odd electronic communications events over the years. An email I sent a decade ago bouncing back, or an email sent to me from long ago suddenly arriving. Those are easy to understand though, some email server along the route dredging up old logs, perhaps when a decommissioned server was rebooted.
But I got an iPhone in 2013 for the first time, and last year while going through the photos on the phone, I found pictures taken by someone else of people I did not know at locations I did not recognize. I do not have iCloud set up either, so that is not a related factor as a way the photos could have been miss-synced. The phone has never been out of my possession.
Any ideas about how this occurred?
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
As with my Slashdot, my email address is some variant on a word for a false name. So a lot of people use it to sign up for services which don't check that email addresses are valid.
I may or may not have reset a few passwords in retaliation.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I got my main email address early on Gmail when it was still invitation-only, and I made it a common Christian phrase without any numbers. Consequently, I get emails meant for everyone and their grandmother, because many individuals, charities, and ecclesial communities use some variation of my email address, then give it out while forgetting to mention whatever numbers are supposed to be appended. At first, I did try to notify people, but I got tired of it because they just kept flowing on in. Once in a while I will notify people if it looks like I get something extremely important; once, for example, someone accidentally sent me money on PayPal and I refunded them. But most of the time it's just a huge nuisance. People sign me up for services that I don't want, or sometimes I try to make an account somewhere and it claims that my account already exists. It's messed up how many web sites will create accounts without first verifying an email address.
Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
My real name is the same and my Gmail account name is very similar to another person's. To add to it, I have discovered that we were both born in the same hospital and lived in the same area as children. I no longer liver there; but he still does.
How do I know all this, because I get his email!
I got an email where the dude had the same address as mine except with an extra character their system musta not handled right.
I've been cutting down on meat consumption, it's not been easy. The misdirected email was a receipt from a rib joint;
> 10 x Cajun Boneless Wings
> 1 x Louisiana Rub Full Ribs
> 1 x Hickory Smoked BBQ Full Ribs
> 3 x Ranch
> 1 x Large Seasoned Fries
Talk about a sucker punch..
I once got a LAPD application sent to me by someone who thought I was their recruiter or whatever. I replied saying they had sent it to the wrong address, and then I deleted the email. I never heard back from the guy, but I imagine he is this moment he is holding a danish trying to stand still next the Leslie Nielsen.
lose != loose
It's been a couple of years (2011), but for a couple of weeks I got multiple emails a day all originating from the Indian branch of a large global travel agency that you've most likely heard of. My gmail address happened to be similar to the name of one of their travel offices, and I guess that's what they were trying to use for their internal emails.
/I immediately deleted all of these emails and their attachments immediate after sending the notice //Always check your recipient address, folks
///And don't send unencrypted JPGs of other people's passports to complete strangers on a gmail account
Not just any emails though -- it would mostly be scans of customer passports and other ID, travel visa applications, etc. Things that should NEVER be sent by email in the first place, let alone to an external free address on hosted a different continent and ESPECIALLY NOT unencrypted..
The first bunch of times I replied with a friendly message pointing out their error, and asked to please make sure to use the right address -- but they kept sending things. The next few dozen notices I sent got progressively less friendly. No change. I briefly considered just ignoring them altogether but felt bad for their customers getting screwed over and having their vacations or other travel plans fall through.
I also send a direct emails to the main email address listed on the website of the travel office explaining the situation, to no avail. The only thing that finally stopped it was sending a nastygram to their UK parent company asking them what kind of Mickey Mouse outfit they were running by their ongoing efforts to send me their confidential customer information despite my continuous reminders not to. Although the emails stopped abruptly after that, even the parent company never acknowledged or replied to my notice. No one ever did.
So... Just keep that in mind should you ever 'need to' hand over your passport to a travel agency or have them help you with a travel visa -- no guarantee that they didn't forward it to a complete stranger using a free mail account on the other side of the planet. A less morally inclined recipient could have REALLY screwed some people over.
At three companies, I have had the standard firstname.lastname email address. At each company, there have been 2-4 other people with the same name, so they get firstinitial.lastname etc etc and I get all the emails by default. Doesn't take a ton of time, but the time I spend tracking down which of "me" a given email belongs to and passing it along is certainly significant.
I got a gmail address early on that uses a unique character name from a popular movie so I get these all the time. Either someone selecting a variant of the name and mistyping it, or just using it as BS e-mail. At the moment, I'm getting the Bank of America notifications from some guys business account this is always on the verge of being overdrawn, and a group e-mail discussion about some sort of reunion. A couple of years ago I got an angry e-mail for some Swedish actress after someone using my e-mail address posted something bad on her web site. I assured her that wasn't me and exchanged a few pleasant e-mails. A few months later I think she accidentally added me as a LinkedIn connection since it probably prompted her from recent e-mails.
I have my first initial and last name @ a popular service. I frequently get stuff intended for others. I've tracked a couple down and managed to find homes for some emails. The frustrating issue is when people make accounts for services. I have to close the accounts if I can't find the owner. In one case, I actually wanted an account there just beforehand, had to delete it and make a new one. I also get password recovery emails from time to time. (I do not forward those).
For several years, there was a supervisor in one of my company's main distribution centers that had the same name as me (I'm in IT). Our names showed up side by side in the company directory, so we would get each other's emails from time to time. The best one I received was from another shipping dock supervisor requesting forklift operation training for a couple of new employees. I considered showing up at the dock - I've always wanted to try to drive a forklift.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.-Ecclesiastes 1:9
Like the ones I get for V1agra and C1Alis, as well as FEDEX NEEDS YOU TO CONFIRM YOUR DELIVERY...
Yeah. spam. I don't have a solution to this. If I did I'd be rich.
Corporatism != Free Market
I used to get emails meant for a 'Mrs. HRC', but deleted them all because they appeared to be marked as Classified. Wonder what that was all about.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
No, but example.com may as well be owned by the same people haha!
There are lots of me, or at least people with the same first and last names.
I got my firstnamelastname@gmail.com address before all the other motherfuckers but that doesn't stop them forgetting they have to insert an initial, a symbol, a number or whatever.
So, I get mail for a fireman in New Zealand, a photographer in Nottingham UK, some guy in California, and a bird watcher in South Wales, a small business in unknown location in UK permanently late with its bills, an agricultural supplies salesman in Eire, and more. I get all sorts: apple product activation confirmations, hotel bookings, flight confirmations, tax demands, late payment warnings, the latest news on farm drainage.
I have tried to do the decent thing where possible and alert senders that they are discussing finance and business with the wrong person. This usually works out.
The bigger difficulty is when the person making the error is not sending to firstname but is the idiot who believes their own actual email address is firstnamelastname@gmail.com. I tried the polite way but doofus insisted on continuing to try to use my address (his actual real address has the word _info appended to the name but he is too dumb to remember). Eventually I emailed his business address book (he loves cc all) with the title "sorry to be an arse", attaching an image of a hairy arse and describing his idiocy and the fact that attempting to deal with him in a polite and helpful manner and resulted only in sour, moronic responses from him. Problem solved.
Some of the tidbits:
Apparently, I own a Hyundai purchased in San Antonio. It keeps sending me emails reminding me to change its oil. I've not been in San Antonio in 40 years.
I'm behind on my rent in London
I applied for a warehouse job in Manchester UK
I was an adult leader of a Boy Scout troop in Pennsylvania
I missed my dentist appointment in Tuscon
The HOA president in Santa Monica is VERY upset with the company that build the wall for our subdivision (3000 miles away)
One guy was trying to send an email to his son in the Army. Came to me. I wrote back informing him of the mistake. He replied with a nastygram, accusing me of hacking his email
Flight and hotel reservation for the 2016 Superbowl through Booking.com. Because I'm a nice guy, I tried to "call" booking.com to fix it. No human available. His reservation got canceled. I wonder if he ever got it fixed.
And the coup de grace...I'm also a victim of idiot gmail not respecting the first.last@ dot convention anymore. Some guy in california signed up for a name that would be mine except for the dot.
I know where he lives, his age, how much he paid to move (too much), what kind of car he drives. And his pet dog is overdue for a shampoo.
If it ever comes to it...he loses. I've had this account since gmail was invite only.
I have FirstinitialLastname@gmail, and wow do I get a lot of mis-addressed e-mails. Here's my canned response for those I do answer (I'm surprised nobody has posted this xkcd link yet.):
Sorry, wrong email address.
Here's a relevant comic for you (this happens a lot):
https://xkcd.com/1279/
Hold your mouse over the picture for more info
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
You're not alone.
I've also had a gmail account since it was invitation only. I also get emails intended for others.
I've developed an approach which is a copy & paste boilerplate reply
"This has come to the wrong address. Please check and resend so my namesake does not miss out. To protect your confidentiality, I will delete this e-mail and future ones of a similar nature. Thank you"
I might add the "you do NOT have my permission to retain or process this e-mail address" words to my boilerplate text -- if you don't mind me copying them :)
Responses received range from a few "OK Sorry to trouble you" ones to which I always reply "No problem - thanks for sorting it" to some arguments and [mostly] no response at all.
In all cases I just add them to a filter rule that deletes the message without reading. It's currently sitting with over 60 filtered addresses (and growing since someone with my name keeps asking folks for timesheets and the people concerned love to 'reply-all').
I've always aimed to behave honourably but there's scope here to really mess up some people if I did reply pretending to be them. I thought I was a relatively rare case but this thread shows it's more common and could be a worrying attack vector for those with malicious intent.
Long story short - I'm gradually migrating away from Google/Gmail [for this and other reasons] telling contacts to use an alternative address.
Martin Espinoza is a horrendously common name. It's not quite at John Smith levels, but it's damned close. I have never been nice about it because I also get tons of deliberate mismessaging; not just spam, but someone (probably some disgruntled slashdotter who doesn't like me destroying his argument) is also deliberately signing me up for crap.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Q: What do most of these comments have in common?
A: Gmail
It is high time someone holds Google accountable for their negligent practices that violate even their own Privacy Policy. Google truly is evil.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
I got to be one of the first gmail beta testers back in 2004, and I was able to get fllllll.gmail, where “f” is the first letter of my first name, and “llllllll” my last name, both being very, extremely, muchos common. Say, something like “jsmith@goo”. So I get price quotes, family pictures, bills, notifications from hundreds of different people all over the world
signed up for GMail back in 2004 and got her firstname.lastname@gmail.com
Interestingly, every single report of this problem in comments to this article comes from GMail users, typically also with initial.lastname@gmail.com or firstname.lastname@gmail.com address.
Looks like an obvious namespacing problem: instead of cramming a billion people into @gmail.com, why wouldn't they split it into a large number of domains? With or without Google's cooperation -- for the former, Google can stop digging the hole and redirect new signups to spaces elsewhere; for the latter, people can do like you for your mother, and move to more competent mail providers.
I'd expect failures like randomly dropping incoming mail after accepting it at SMTP dialog to happen for redchan.it not for gmail, ran by the biggest group of supposedly skilled SREs. Is it that hard to understand: once you respond with a 2XX, the mail must be delivered? Spam fighting is not an excuse: if a well-behaved sending server giving you a 100% hammy mail gets classified as spam for a bullshit reason, you do give a honking reject not an accept+drop, capisce?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Or “invalid.tld”
I was an early Gmail adopter, so my address is firstname.lastname at gmail.
I get mail for a couple of other people from time to time, whose address is the same as mine but with numbers at the end. I forward them, assuming I can determine who it is actually for, mostly for the Judge in Texas or the Lawyer in San Diego. There are at least two others, a realtor in Long Beach keeps forwarding me property listings, and I got another for another guy in Texas who bought a bed liner for his truck, that wasn't the judge.
I try and forward them, or at minimum notify the sender they have the wrong address, simply because I would hope other people would do the same for me.
There are a couple of people sharing my name that just cannot remember their own email when booking hotels etc. Once I got an introductory email to the new job of these guys got. Took quite a bit of back and forth of "Oh, but of course you need this information" - "No, I am not the person that you hired" - "But it says so right here". Guess in the end they deserved each other.
I have email addresses on several very popular domains that are very, very old and use a very, very popular nickname -- no letters, no numbers, just the bare nick. I didn't know they would be so conspicuous when I signed up for them in the nineties, but so be it.
I get a lot of misdirected email. A ridiculous amount of it, actually. People often inadvertently drop letters, numbers, and other differentiators from addresses, and they end up in my in-box. Sometimes I can figure out who they're for and forward them on, but that's the exception and not the rule.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
One person signed up for a UK telephone plan with an email address of mine (not name-based), I couldn't unsubscribe from the emails without logging into their system, which I ended up doing, and posting a few notes on their Support forum that I was able to access this person's plan and everyone should quit the service because their security is shit. (I changed the email to something like NOTATTHISEMAILADDRESS@GMAIL.COM).
Right now I'm also getting someone's British Gas account notifications. I've also recently received Instagram account verification requests and shipping confirmations. (I'm in Canada.)
None of these allow me to reply to the notifications, or 'report' or notify them in any way, other than to log into the account it seems. WTF?
How is it these services don't require you to confirm a link with the email before proceeding? Even random discussion forums have higher standards, why don't UK phone carriers or utilities?
I occasionally get emails about online pizza orders made by some guy in Germany who shares my last name and can't get his email right. He lives somewhere in Berlin and likes thin crust pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms.
I got firstname.lastname@gmx.de and for a while, I frequently got mail that was obviously not meant to me. Stuff like invites to meetings, invoices...
Eventually, one of the incoming mails contained a snail mail address, and I was able to contact the other guy through that.
Turns out he has actually the same firstname.lastname but @gmx.net. Apparently people were too sloppy to closely look at the address. They just went "oh, GMX" (which is a popular free-mailer here), and put the suffix .de in the address. Hence the mail coming to me.
Once I reached him by snail mail, he told people about the difference between gmx.net and gmx.de, and the amount of misguided mail slowed to a trickle. With one notable exception though:
The support of O2 was too stupid to understand the issue and failed to adjust the mail address. So the O2 invoices kept coming to me. That is one provider I cannot recommend due to the sheer stupidity of their support guys.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I've had my own domain name for 20(?) years now, and I (and a couple friends) are the only ones who have even used it, so I don't get any misdirected email, but...
My telephone number has apparently been inadvertently entered many times for various people. So I get calls (not robocalls) from people saying that they got a message with this number, or it was on a form somewhere. I also have a personal tollfree number (for relatives/friends around the country). For a very short time, I was getting lots of calls because some business had published their new tollfree number, but typo'd it and published my number. It was a mortgage company. I got lots of calls asking about mortgage status, even calls from other mortgage companies. These people would start spilling confidential info before I could stop them.
So many typo's, so little time to fix them...
There's someone who seems to commonly use my email when purchasing products. She has the same first initial and last name. This has happened a bunch over the years. Often it's "We're happy you stopped in, please call us if you have any questions" type emails.
Last week I received an email with the VIN number of the new Ford she bought, along with instructions on how to install Ford Connect to locate the car and remotely lock and unlock it.
So I emailed the salesman (whose name was in the email). That email bounced (figured out later he'd left the dealer after the sale.) I just dropped it.
A week later Ford sent me a survey asking how satisfied I was. So I answered the survey (I did not receive an introduction to the service department!) I get to the end, and it asks me to confirm my contact information: name, address, and phone number. So I called her and left an message. No response. I emailed the dealer again, copying the General Manager's email this time. No response. I found the salesman's professional Facebook page and messaged him. No response.
So I put the story on the dealer's Facebook page. DING DING DING. I got an email within hours saying that they would remove the faulty contact information.
I would guess anyone eigh an email address with no numbers on a popular free service gets a lot of wrong person emails. I let the sender know they reached the wrong person since i would want the same courtesy. I only had one person insist they had the right address since minehad a period between the names and the one they were using. They were sending me a lot of personal information and finallyfixed it ehen i sent them sn email saying any disclaimers not withstanding any further emails became my property to use as i saw fit.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
... I did.
When the boss's son got married, the firm had me give her an email in our domain.
I really, really, made a scene telling any and all how bad an idea that was.
Predictably, she sent out all kinds of shit, and recipients and the firm was challenged on several occasion regarding the content.
Sure enough, I sent the guy an email about a meeting and he forwarded it to her so she'd know where he's be.
She hit, "Reply to all ..." and I got the following shit:
Honey, I enjoyed last night very much but you are going to have to control yourself.
Your violence did not excite me, it scared me.
I didn't know you were like this at all.
I'm not into dom/sub and you should have asked me before you ...
Goddam.
I had to take it to him.
He finally got a fucking clue and got her a Gmail.
Shit.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I got my gmail address quite early, back in the invite days from another slashdot poster, so my address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com.
There is a doctor whose gmail adress is drfirstnamelastname@gmail.com but who must forget about the initial "dr" occasionally, as do some people he works with. I have never gotten any patient related stuff but I have received a few travel, visa and medical business related emails. Also emails directed to a plumber in London, someone who left their passport in a youth hostel, someone whose online order for a tie was messed up and someone who was being chased for some unpaid bill.
I have a friend in New York who knows almost the whole life story of her Florida namesake because Florida woman always forgets that she had to use a middle initial in her gmail account.
Dot(s) in a Gmail account get you wrong mail.
Not sure I should confess this one, but... In one of the early email systems I programmed, I made a little mistake in how names were handled. Had to do with a search function in the database that I was using, but no question about who messed up and I have met the enemy...
Under certain cases the email system would deliver email to the intended recipient and to someone else...
Suffice it to say that I don't want to go too far into the details. I don't think there was any serious damage, but I learned a lot about the importance of adequate testing, and some more besides.
Regarding email that's misaddressed to me, the most common cases involve Gmail where people assume (definitely making an "ass") that their friend uses the default name on Gmail. Not that my name is common, but there are more than you think and I was the first one to to sign up for Gmail. What really pisses me off is when they propagate the incorrect address to entire groups of fools and then the email keeps drifting in for months.
The worst problem is still the spammers, however. My primary email is not Gmail, but it's "catchy" enough to fall into the dictionary attacks.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
My email address is my first name @gmail.com. A coworker had a blogger.com account back when the initial beta gmail invites only went to people who had one.
I get emails intended for various people all around the world, a couple a month. I always reply back and kindly let them know they sent it to the wrong person.
I've gotten tax papers, invitations to pick up Christmas decorations, recipes, receipts, and resumes. I've probably also gotten a couple amorous letters, but those are indistinguishable from spam so it's hard to tell.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Astoundingly often ... like others, I got in Gmail early and got a good address.
I'm not surprised that others wish they had my address ... I'm just astounded at how many people actually seem to think they have it.
All sorts of receipts and transactional emails ... hotels, online shopping, tire places ... from around the English speaking world. Oh, and one guy actually had business cards printed up with my email address ... and apparently he is quite the player. Yikes. (Him I actually did track down ... he thought it was pretty funny.)
I have a very common name, and I get misdirected e-mail from all over the world.
Fairly frequently, I'll reply to let the sender know that they've got the wrong e-mail address.
Once it was billing info from a phone company that had the recipient's phone number, so I texted her to let her know she'd put in the wrong e-mail address when she signed up for her phone.
Sometimes they're commercial e-mail with a valid "unsubscribe" link, so that's nice.
The most frustrating ones though, are commercial e-mail without a useful reply-to, where the unsubscribe link needs you to log in. But it's not my account, so I can't do that... though there is a "reset your password" option, which I technically could use, since it would send an e-mail to *me*. I haven't done that, but it always makes me wonder, if I did, would I be breaking the law? Because I did "hack" that account. But does the account really "belong" to the person who created it, or does it belong to the person who receives the e-mail that the account is associated to?
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
Waaay back in 90s, I received an email at a Big Northern.edu for another Dr Joe (same last name) at a Big Southern.edu. My doppelganger had written an article in Scientific American, and the email asked more information.
It was easy enough to track down the address of the other Dr Joe, so I forwarded it. But I considered adding that article in my CV.... the other doc could claim my publications in return. Win-win!
Lose = not win
Circa 1994 I was the systems guy and embedded development guy at a startup. We registered a domain using the initials of the company name. Non-tech companies were slower to set up general Internet mail and domains. Within a few months, whenever I scanned our postmaster mailbox, I found increasing numbers of emails directed to a movie production company which had the same initials, but who registered their domain with their full company name. People were lazy or were guessing, and used the initials.
I should have registered my own initials as a domain early on. That domain eventually was registered by a large bank with my same initials. If I had taken the domain first, they probably would have sued me to abandon both the domain and public use of my own initials.
Like a lot of you, I have had a Gmail since the invite days... InitialUncommonlastname@gmail.com. Except that uncommon last name is common in another country. I throw out most of the crap but do try to reach out on the rare occasion something looks important. I've used "recover password" and found people's home addresses. Taken a look on Google Street View. Sent them texts telling them I liked their rose bushes, etc. Asked many women with my initial to stop using my address for junk. Lots of fun with that. Oh lord do I love the ones where they threaten me for "hacking" their mail or using "their" email address. I just tell them to bring it onnnnnn. Dipshiats.
I gave one gal about 4 extra chances when I texted her to log into her account and change the contact email. I gave her the new password but she just kept on punching "recover password" and thus sending me another stupid confirmation email.
At least twice a month I get emails from a business in a foreign country where apparently they don't require 1-click opt-out links. They're wondering why I don't show up for my appointments. They also don't respond to my replies.
There was one occasion where I was getting on-boarding mail meant for a new employee at a company who used Gmail to host their website and email. It seems like their Google-hosted domain mail was getting internally re-written to Gmail addresses. So they set up InitialUncommonlastname@Googhostedcompany.com and Google just blindly forwarded his mail to me, at my long-already established address. Their admin didn't believe me of course. Those mails finally just stopped coming. They probably just made a new account with a '1' at the end, hehe.
The best story involves an interior decorator who sent apologies for not finishing work on time. I was feeling evil and wrote back saying that their services were no longer required. They got very apologetic and wanted to make amends. I wrote that their work was sloppy and we had noticed someone going through our lingerie. This went another round or two with shock and denials, but then they must have finally called their client. I got a hilarious final email brazenly apologizing for trying on the lingerie, and also for drinking 'my' expensive wine!
I own several domains, including one once owned by an internet service provider. You learn a lot about people that way! Sure I read the mails -they're mine now suckah!
Twice a week I get inmate headcounts, lists of inmates requesting infirmary, along with name, inmate number, social security etc.
It's a manual email list of about 20 emails of management in the "to" field, I've emailed 3 times over past 2 years but the email stops for month or 2 then begins again.
So I just made a filter to sort it all. It's hilarious getting federal prisoner private info along with guard requests, names, incident reports, etc.
Hehe
I thought about replying and canceling. ;) But since I had the contact information for the office I just called them and let them know. The message also included the phone number of the patient so I called her and explained the situation. We had a nice conversation. :D Sadly I never heard from them again. :(
For a while I was getting some kind of statement from what looked like a job shop in England. No contact info and of course a non-working return address.
The funniest one was one that went to a group of women in Australia arranging a girls night out. (I'm in the US.) I replied to all that I had no idea where that was but it sounded like a lot of fun and I was quite looking forward to it.
A few times I got unexpected e-mails that was related to services like Facebook, Instagram, etc. that I never signed up! It's funny that I could recover their existing accounts' passwords and logins. Wow!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
its the 21st century. if u have recieved an email not addressed to you...good job !
text and email are 2 different things...duh...concentrate on the subject.
Only once, when I was a fido point, with a fairly unique point number. Someone sent an email to one of the other points and mis-typed one of the digits. I got the mail, rather than the woman he was trying to talk into leaving her husband.
I've tried to track a few down with some success, but the only one I put much effort into was the one where I was getting the email confirmations and printable certificates for someone's continuing medical education courses to maintain their nursing credentials.
That one had a pretty uncommon name, and I ended up tracking down a phone number via an online publishing of their (small rural) church's member directory.
fencepost
just a little off
...it's mostly my own doing.
When gmail was a beta "invitation only" service, I spent $20 on ebay for two such invites.
In return, I scored "mylastname@gmail.com" email address and "myfirstinitiallastname@gmail.com"
My last name is not that common in the US (howmanyofme says about 18000 others share it). The same site shows 10 people in the US with my first/last name combo.
Why I didn't think about the consequences a little more and choose the less-easy-for-spammers-to-guess and less-likely-for-other-users-garble "firstnamelastnme@gmail.com" option is another question.
But: in the central European country my grandfather emigrated from (and two countries that border it), my last name is common. Real common. The fifth most common in that country and its neighbors.
So: I get a LOT of foreign language spam and the occaissional mispitched personal email in the last name only account. I try to identify obvious items of importance that have arrived by mistake and notify the sender (because I'd hope somebody would to the same for me).
The other account (firstinitiallastname) gets a LOT of mistaken emails. Sometimes I'll end up on the mailing list for churches/schools in other states (they are very responsive to "not me please stop" requests. Estimates for home repairs, pictures of family members, etc etc have all arrived over the years. Sometimes what are obviously important medical or professional emails (job interviews!) arrive and I let the sender know. This spring I started getting tuition payment notices from guys film school college in L.A....they are from a "do not reply/not monitored" account, so tough darts for him. Hopefully he knows his tuition is due.
The worst was a repeated, multi-year series of mistaken emails belonging to a very wealthy VC capitalist lady a few years younger and several tax brackets higher than me. She lived in gated community near San Diego (her giant house was literally next the polo club). She had very expensive tastes in wine, food and leisure activities (including both VC and non-profit fundraising events). She and her husband were shopping for second homes in Utah and New Mexico. Her husband frequently upgraded his vehicles (always high end BMW and Mercedes) and often then modified his wheels. One of his comments to his tire/wheel guy about a new rim selection was: "I like the shiny". I received pictures of her friends at a bachelorotte party for a second marriage that included lots of done up ladies in revealing evening attire. I know all this, because for all of her money, she NEVER once had the courtesy to respond to than me for the 10 to 20 times I told her that I had her stuff in my inbox again, and she needed to correct the contact info she was giving her peeps...so I accumulated unwanted knowledge about her life over a four year period before the spigot got turned off.
signed up with gmail in the beta, picked up firstname.middleinitial.lastname@gmail.com (obviously not the actual email address but you understand the formatting)
someone else in delaware has firstnamemiddleinitiallastname@gmail.com
another user in the UK has firsnamemiddleinitial.lastname@gmail.com
another one in california has first.namemiddleinitiallastname@gmail.com
and one more from virgnia uses firstnamemiddleinitiallast.name@gmail.com
the 5 of us have been dealing with this for years.
weve all sat in a conference call with googles techs to see if the can figure it out thus far no luck. they refuse to acknowledge the problem exists
right now we each have our own folder to move our personal mail into and promise to not read anyone elses mail.
Got a mail not meant for me, sent by a girl to some girl friend of hers -- I'm a guy. Replied concisely and professionally. Got a laughing excuse in reply. Replied in the same vein, with reference to how the original mail tied in to my personal context. Exchanges continued for a few days, covering the fact that we lived several time zones apart, and culminating in "I really like talking with you, I have to ask, are you married?"
I suffer from having fairly common given AND surnames. And from the simple fact that a frankly astonishing number of normals seem to think that just using @gmail.com as their email address (registered or not) is their god-given right. So I get everything. Realtors' messages, offers from a yacht broker, medical appointment reminders, confirmation mails for every-fucking-thing from utilities to kindergarten applications, earned points announcements/statements from any number of airline and retail points programs... every.fucking.thing. It all started about 10 years ago when email penetration exceeded 40% of population in the US, but I get mis-addressed email from all over the english speaking world.
Steve -- If you have to call it a system, you don't know what it is.
I'm just a random, non-descript motorist, but I occasionally get email for John Perkins, author of Confessions Of An Economic Hitman. I have first/last .com. He has first/last .org.
The first time was some property management company around 1,500 KM and in another country (I'm in Canada, they were in the US). I asked nicely several times to have them stop, but they didnt so i decided to be a d*ck about it. they were not very nice, and the fact they were agaisnt Canada's unsolicted email laws didnt cause them to fix this any faster. It shoudlnt have taken 2+ months to stop emailing me about the daily operatoins of a condo.
The second time is still ongoing, where i get someone's 401k updates (no details, just telling me to login and review these fantastic new products).
I suspect this is from the same person, who has missed a letter in her own gmail account which happens to be my gmail account.
I have a very common name, and firstname.lastname@gmail. I get all kinds of things. Once I got on an American elementary school teacher's parent mailing list. I got everything, including a class list with kids and parents' names, addresses and phone numbers. She was rather embarassed when I e-mailed and mentioned the mistake. Took a while for the parents to stop replying to the old list though.
I also got home security system updates for a while. Messages like "Tammy at x street has gone to bed for the night." "Tammy has left the house." The e-mails didn't have any kind of reporting link, the reply-to address was a robot, and all the usual guesses, including webmaster, got no response. I sent a regular mail letter to her house.
One of the more entertaining was when some shady developer shared a folder with me on dropbox. I thought it was a colleague and accepted. He dropped a bunch of financial and planning documents in the folder, realized his mistake a few days later and quickly deleted them all.
I was an early adopter of gmail, and was able to get an address that's simply (my) firstnamelastname@gmail.com. I also have a fairly common name - there are a few hundred of me in the USA alone. One of those similarly-named folks selected the same gmail address as mine, but with a middle initial (firstnameAlastname@gmail.com). Over the years, I've gotten: his travel reservations, angry letters from his Mom, his credit report (horrifying!), a photo of his Dad asleep poolside with his junk hanging out of his shorts (even more horrifying!), and countless personal and work-related messages. Any time I get a message intended for this person that appears to have been human-generated, I respond and ask that they get the correct address for the person they wish to contact, and remove MY address from their contacts. I've probably done that 75 times over the years, and gotten repeat email from probably 2/3 of those folks. I finally realized that this person must either think my address is his, or he's just an incredibly sloppy typist and consistently omits the 'A' when he keys his address into a form. For a while he even had a website for his business that directed mail from the "Request Info" form to me! This actually finally stopped about six months ago - I'm not sure if this person finally got their address right, or simply stopped using that address, but I'm relieved to know that I'm not likely to get any more photos of sleeping PornoDad.
I can top this. In a trifecta of confusion someone with the same name as me tried to email someone else with my name and sent it to me by mistake. Probably the weirdest email I've ever gotten.
Idiots use my email address all the time as if it were their own for SERIOUS stuff like medical portals (which themselves are almost always terrible) and club/charity/friend/relative things that are obviously real. I send corrections when I feel sorry for somebody, but most of it I just delete.
The misdirected e-mails I've seen is when they meant to send something to an individual and hit reply all by mistake.
Especially if it's a guy responding to a chick.
Happens to me several times a week in Gmail. The first couple of times, I contacted the person the email was for, it was about a Verizon payment due notice for someone living in New York, After it KEPT happening, for emails meant for more other people, I just started marking them as Spam and deleting them. Still get account info for some guy concerning his Lloyd's Bank account. Never happens in my paid Yahoo Mail, or my free Hotmail account. ONLY Gmail. I think there's something screwy with Gmail's algorithms.
As a result, I NEVER trust Gmail with anything important. No telling WHO would get the email. These days, I mainly use Gmail as a "spam dump".
"A Bird In The Hand Will Poop On Your Wrist"-Benny Hill,1982
No joke, but there was a plastic surgeon in Texas who had the same first and last name as I. He specialized in breast augmentation. It's a while ago now, but right around the year 2000 or 2001, I got an email inquiring about his services. Apparently, the young woman writing thought I was he. I was sorely tempted to say that I would need to see what I would be working with, before I could give my "professional opinion," but my conscience got the best of me.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
I received a note from someone's interior decorator about not finishing a project, and that they would like to schedule to come back the next week. I was feeling a bit evil, so I told them that they were fired, and need not return.
Their response was surprise and remorse and asking what was the matter. I said that the work was sub-par and that someone had been messing with our lingerie.
They replied with shock and denials and I'm sure they were never more baffled and embarrassed.
Their next email was an apology for trying on the lingerie, and further apologizing for drinking our expensive wine in the kitchen too *wink wink* so I know they must have finally phoned the real client and caught on to my pranks.
Good times!
Lately I've been sent a lot of requests to work additional shifts at a sporting goods store in Idaho. I considered going, but I don't think it's really worth the hassle of a 16+ hour commute from New Zealand.
My namesake (work address, he used to work there) has left behind mail correspondents such as his alma mater (I've never been there, and telling them I am not him isn't working - I think it's time for another call, this time to the Dean of Alumni Relations), his former employer (what? He's gone, gone, gone, do you you know this?), many many professional contacts (most give up when I gently tell them I'm not him), and a myriad of outfits offering those sweet high-end services , products, and, yes, advice. And I am not him, don't work in the same field, or at the same level, and they are frikin annoying. Some have kept it up for 8 years, hundfrreds of messages, not the spammers, but his alma mater especially should stop.
That's just one. Another 6 from previous engagements also are the target of a steady drip of crap plainly intended to person, personally. One I had to redact to send from work, it was too personal to send, and I got back a fairly vicious threat, which when I referred to my mail team resulted in a legal response, and a warning to me to forward any further communications to legal - they apparently found the secret phrase that elicited a response. It's been a while.
Otherwise, someone used my email to avoid debt collectors, and that's a different problem. My phone number is out too, and the outfits that call it are highly annoyed that I'm highly annoyed that they keep calling me despite my evidence that I am not who they want, do not know who they want, and cannot help, but dammit I'm tired of them calling over and over, and they get angry when I point out I've told them many times, like I'm at fault. They change numbers, area codes, and it's pointless.
But welcome to technology. In the 70s I got calls from a university in a state I had never actually been in. After a few years I finally agreed to pay the library bill if they would be so kind as to send me my diploma. Never heard from them again.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I get emails constantly for someone with the same name one province over. I've tried on multiple occasions to tell the senders, including a bank, that they have the wrong address but they keep coming. I've marked them all as spam. Not sure what else to do.
Somebody with the same name back east has been occasionally giving out my gmail address for years. He used my email address for his GameStop account. When I told GameStop, they said "If you cancel your account, you will lose all your points." Well, duh, I just told you I'm not your customer, idiot, how about contacting your actual customer and letting him know he gave the wrong email address. Or cancel his account and take away the points he's earned over his very active game-buying habit and tick him off, I don't care.
His daughter sent me several "Hey, dad, the kids at school are..." type emails. I replied with a carefully worded "Wrong email address" email.
Grocery store "customer loyalty" card. NFL fan site. (blargh) Olan Mills photography studio appointment confirmation. A FedEx delivery notification. (Yeah, FedEx delivery notification phishing is rampant, but this was a specific product to a specific address in the general area of the person. That, I printed out and snail-mailed to the address, with a "Please correct your email address on all these accounts" note.
Lately, I've gotten several Regions Bank Popmoney "Money transferred to your account" notifications. I've tried to notify Regions Bank several times, but they do not respond and the notifications keep happening.
Presumably, this guy is wondering why he's missing some important email, but I haven't figured out how to contact him.
It's quite common, most days I get one or two emails meant for these four guys. Most sites are so poorly implemented that there's no way to unsubscribe or report, they just accept any email at face value.
I just ignore them.