Someone using my Gmail address

gooner99

Hi. For the last few months someone in the US has been using my Gmail address which is simply my first and last names with no full stops or numbers. At first I thought maybe it was that the other person had a full stop in their address and I have read that sometimes Gmail have an issue with delivery with these. The other option is that the other person is using it knowingly as they have a different first name. I find this odd as they order stuff with my Gmail address as well as signing up to newsletters, mailing lists, etc. I tried to contact Google, but haven't found a way to do so. Anyone got experience of this. What are my best options?

TheW1zard

How did they get your password?

bren2002

It happens to be occasionally, I get emails meant for someone else with a similar address. I think that person's right address has a G in it . I tried contacting them a few times and got a load of attitude

I've super secured my account and now just delete them as they come in. Unsubscribe etc from lists.

5555555555

Change your password

Cobalt17

gooner99 wrote: »

Hi. For the last few months someone in the US has been using my Gmail address which is simply my first and last names with no full stops or numbers. At first I thought maybe it was that the other person had a full stop in their address and I have read that sometimes Gmail have an issue with delivery with these. The other option is that the other person is using it knowingly as they have a different first name. I find this odd as they order stuff with my Gmail address as well as signing up to newsletters, mailing lists, etc. I tried to contact Google, but haven't found a way to do so. Anyone got experience of this. What are my best options?

I think you can use 2 factor authentication with gmail. Even if some gets your password, they won’t be able to do anything with it.

bren2002

TheW1zard wrote: »

How did they get your password?

If this is the case, setup 2fa now and update the recovery account details. Then log the account out of all devices, there's an option in GSuite for that

thomas anderson.

Weird. Same thing is happening to me. Some dude in the states is singing up for things using my email address.

I'm getting emails from school's, restaraunts and even churches.

I reckon some old fella is miss typing

Darwin

Have you checked the last activity on your gmail account? See here:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/45938?hl=en


I think its pretty unlikely someone is using your account as they surely would have changed the password and locked you out. I actually have my own name registered to my gmail account as I got in at the very beginning, as in firstname.lastname@gmail.com.
However, I regularly get emails meant for other people who share the same name as me. That is because when they order something or sign up for a mailing list, they put in joebloggs@gmail.com or jo.ebloggs@gmail.com when in fact they will all get delivered to joe.bloggs@gmail.com
The position of the dot makes no difference. I'm guessing this is what is happening to you.

Uncle Pierre

I reckon he just means they're inputting his address by mistake when they mean to input their own. Same thing has happened me twice, both also with people in the USA.

My address is basically (first initial)(surname)(last two digits of year I was born)@gmail.com - example would be cmurphy72@gmail.com

For the sake of explaining here, don't mind saying that C is my first initial and I was born in 1972 all right. But my surname is not Murphy!

Anyway, was able to tell from content of mails that both people involved also had initial C and same surname.

One was a woman called Cheryl and could tell from emails that also contained her postal/shipping address (e.g. online order confirmations, or tracking emails for items ordered) that she was in Huntsville, Alabama. After I'd been getting them for a while, I actually posted a letter to that address one day. Still no idea what her correct email was and I never heard back from her, but I stopped getting them after that.

Other one involved a guy called Chris in Massachusetts. Ended up getting one that also included a phone number, so sent him a text message. Turns out it was regular typos, as the year he meant to put was 71 rather than 72.

So, if this is the kind of situation you mean, it could actually be innocent enough. Do any of the mails you've been getting have similar sort of contact details?

Darwin

Pretty much yes that is what is happening. I do get lots of personal details which I delete straight away and notify the sender if I can (lucky for them), but these people are being very careless.

gooner99

Sorry. Should have made it clear that I've not been hacked and no one is attempting to use my account. Yes I read that it can be as simple as someone inputting it wrongly or as joe.bloggs and it gets delivered to joebloggs. This apparently is a flaw in Gmail. Alas with no way of getting through to Gmail I will continue to mark as spam and unsubscribe where possible. Odd that one serial offenders first name is different to mine, so an odd typo to make. I need to see if I get the full name and address or phone number and try and bring it to their attention that way. I have replied to a few of the senders to highlight it, but never get a reply. The last one Today was a receipt from PayPal. I've asked them how the same email address can be used for two PayPal accounts. Will see what comes back. Alas I guess no reply.

afatbollix

It happened to me before. I actually was able to find them on Facebook and sorted it pretty quick.

It was a shame as it was a first-class plane ticket to the Caribbean and I had the same name so could of showed up..

But he was a doctor so would of felt bad.... Nice to see a Dr afatbollix out there.

TheW1zard

God help you if your name was john murphy or something! Thousands of emails coming in lol.

tedpan

FYI - I realised this today, very strange that it's happened to you too.

Dots are ignored by Gmail. For example, tedpan@gmail.com would still reach you if send a mail to t.ed.p.an@gmail.com

Very strange that it took me 15 years to understand I shouldn't put a dot in the middle of my name! Someone is using my email minus the dot of course to play fortnite

28064212

gooner99 wrote: »

Sorry. Should have made it clear that I've not been hacked and no one is attempting to use my account. Yes I read that it can be as simple as someone inputting it wrongly or as joe.bloggs and it gets delivered to joebloggs. This apparently is a flaw in Gmail. Alas with no way of getting through to Gmail I will continue to mark as spam and unsubscribe where possible. Odd that one serial offenders first name is different to mine, so an odd typo to make. I need to see if I get the full name and address or phone number and try and bring it to their attention that way. I have replied to a few of the senders to highlight it, but never get a reply. The last one Today was a receipt from PayPal. I've asked them how the same email address can be used for two PayPal accounts. Will see what comes back. Alas I guess no reply.

It's not a flaw, it's a deliberate feature. All of these addresses are the same account on Gmail:
[noparse]joebloggs@gmail.com[/noparse]
[noparse]joe.bloggs@gmail.com[/noparse]
[noparse]j.o.e.bloggs@gmail.com[/noparse]

The only person who ever received email for any of these was the one who set up the initial account. There is no misdelivery. What's actually happening is that someone thinks their email is [noparse]joebloggs@gmail.com[/noparse], but it's actually [noparse]joebloggs72@gmail.com[/noparse] (or in the case of the wrong first name, [noparse]johnbloggs@gmail.com[/noparse]).

To people who are reasonably computer-savvy, this seems almost impossible, to not know your correct email address, but there are a huge number of people to whom this is all magic and have no concept of what's happening. Plenty of them will think that "close-enough" is just fine for emails, same as it is for postal letters

Thoie

There's a woman in the US whose email I receive relatively regularly. Her gmail is JoeEBloggs@gmail while mine is JoeBloggs@gmail (she uses her middle initial, which happens to be the same as the last letter of our first names).

It's usually companies mishearing her or making typos when writing things down. Her boyfriend once sent me plane tickets, which was nice. I only bothered tracking her down when there was an important message about her wedding dress, in which they mentioned they'd lost her phone number.

She's got most things moved over to "her" account now. The odd one still comes through. If it's something important I'll send it on to her, otherwise I just delete it.

Uncle Pierre

Something similar with my wife'e gmail. She uses her middle initial too, which happens to be the same as the first letter of our surname, so for example it's auntppierre@gmail.com

Same thing with others either taking it down wrong or thinking they've typed it wrong when they see two letters the same, right beside each other, and they then send to just auntpierre@gmail.com instead.

The other woman somehow figured it out at some stage and has been forwarding stuff to my wife whenever it's happened since then. It's gotten to the stage where they're even Facebook friends now!

Heebie

It's probably not one "guy" signing your email up to lists or whatever.
Your address probably got sold by someone you interacted with, or someone who scraped it from somewhere, to spammers, or to people who profit when someone signs up to a site using a link provided... they sign up 20,000 people using an email list they get for a fiver, and make a profit.
It could also be someone who was getting the spam you get now... who changed the email address on the account so they would stop getting it.

Sadly there's not that much to be done other than make sure your password is good, and you have 2fa turned on.

Ave Sodalis

GMail is terrible for this. At one point, I was getting emails from people all over the place. Some lady is the US signed up for a science program, and I got all her emails about it. Another woman in Derry was apparently taking her dog to the vet a few months ago. It seems they let people join with dots in the address, and then don't differentiate between them when sending.

NSAman

Jaysus... i have been rumbled.


Is your email..fanny.obrien@gmail.com?

28064212

Ave Sodalis wrote: »

GMail is terrible for this. At one point, I was getting emails from people all over the place. Some lady is the US signed up for a science program, and I got all her emails about it. Another woman in Derry was apparently taking her dog to the vet a few months ago. It seems they let people join with dots in the address, and then don't differentiate between them when sending.

It's not gmail's mistake. If someone joins with [noparse]joebloggs@gmail.com[/noparse], it is not possible to register [noparse]joe.bloggs@gmail.com[/noparse]. The mistake is being made by the sender of the email (or the submitter, in the case of website registrations)

Airyfairy12

Something similare happened to me only my account was taken over my somebody else who was as unaware as I was, I logged into an old gmail account that I hardley ever use only to discover it was now somebody elses account in America with the same name as me, every time I logged in there was new emails she was signed up to, she even had a profile picture. I changed my password thinking that would fix the problem, it did for a while until I ended up getting locked out of it for a few weeks and all my associated websites/social medias, I think she might have been able to get into it from a recovery email or something and changed the password, then one day I could get into them again and this other person no longer shared my account. Very strange, I think the people in gmail might have found out and seperated our accounts.

Ave Sodalis

28064212 wrote: »

It's not gmail's mistake. If someone joins with [noparse]joebloggs@gmail.com[/noparse], it is not possible to register [noparse]joe.bloggs@gmail.com[/noparse]. The mistake is being made by the sender of the email (or the submitter, in the case of website registrations)

It seems to happen an awful lot, and with a variety of people. It's never happened with my Outlook address, which I've had since near enough its release in 2007.

Victor

gooner99 wrote: »

Alas with no way of getting through to Gmail I will continue to mark as spam and unsubscribe where possible.

Do not unsubscribe from emails you didn't sign up to. It's a way for spammers to check if your email address is real. Just mark as spam and block.

gooner99

Victor wrote: »

Do not unsubscribe from emails you didn't sign up to. It's a way for spammers to check if your email address is real. Just mark as spam and block.

Only if it's the auto unsubscribe when I use unsubscribe and report spam option. I never bother filling anything in if it redirects me to a website. In future will just report as spam. Thanks for the tip.

gooner99

Thanks all for the replies. It gives a good understanding of whats going on.

The strange one is the PayPal. Surely you need to confirm your account via email when you initially sign up.

Heebie

gooner99 wrote:

Only if it's the auto unsubscribe when I use unsubscribe and report spam option. I never bother filling anything in if it redirects me to a website. In future will just report as spam. Thanks for the tip.

There link in the email is probably encoded to identify your email address if you click on the link. It doesn't really matter if you fill out the form. They still know the email got to you... and see read.

pwurple

Yup, some US person doing the same with me. Bank details, mortgage applications, social security deray, the whole lot emailed to me.

Absolute dope. I got her details and phoned her about it, she had no interest in correcting it. Tempted to start diverting funds to my revolut, but holding off.

28064212

Ave Sodalis wrote: »

It seems to happen an awful lot, and with a variety of people. It's never happened with my Outlook address, which I've had since near enough its release in 2007.

That's because Outlook.com doesn't have this feature. [noparse]joebloggs@outlook.com[/noparse] and [noparse]joe.bloggs@outlook.com[/noparse] are different accounts. This means each individual account receives less "typo" emails. Say you're joebloggs, and someone is trying to reach joe.bloggs72, but mistype it as joe.bloggs or joebloggs. In Gmail, you would receive either mistake, in Outlook you would only receive one. But note that in neither case does the email go to the right person, and in neither case is it the fault of the email service

Also, Outlook.com has substantially less users, and is even less recognised among the kind of people to make typos in email addresses. For lots of people, Gmail and email are synonymous, like Google search and "The Internet", which in itself contributes to the problem: people putting in [noparse]joebloggs@gmail.com[/noparse], when the person they're looking for is [noparse]joe.bloggs@outlook.com[/noparse]

lawred2

gooner99 wrote: »

Hi. For the last few months someone in the US has been using my Gmail address which is simply my first and last names with no full stops or numbers. At first I thought maybe it was that the other person had a full stop in their address and I have read that sometimes Gmail have an issue with delivery with these. The other option is that the other person is using it knowingly as they have a different first name. I find this odd as they order stuff with my Gmail address as well as signing up to newsletters, mailing lists, etc. I tried to contact Google, but haven't found a way to do so. Anyone got experience of this. What are my best options?

believe it or not google ignores dots

do my.email.address@gmail.com is the same as myemailaddress@gmail.com

But that doesn't explain how a conflicting email address was created to begin with

28064212

lawred2 wrote: »

But that doesn't explain how a conflicting email address was created to begin with

It wasn't. It's never been possible on Gmail to set up joe.bloggs when joebloggs already existed.