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Ask HN: Gmail – getting emails intended for others

1 pointsby dirtydroogalmost 5 years ago
It appears my name and middle initial are extremely common. To date, in my gmail account I&#x27;ve received highly personal emails intended for other people. They&#x27;re not spam or phishing emails either. These include:<p>- police reports<p>- job offers<p>- draft divorce settlements<p>- bills<p>- sea cadet schedules<p>It&#x27;s probably due to gmail ignoring delimiters in email addresses, but are these emails being sent to all variations of the email address? When it&#x27;s something like a job offer I do notify the sender that they&#x27;ve got the wrong email address, but this is all a bit concerning.

1 comment

11874442almost 5 years ago
I have this same problem. I have firstname.middlename@gmail.com and I regularly get emails that are sent to firstnamemiddlename@gmail.com.<p>They are real emails too, banking with sensitive info pdfs, signup emails, etc.<p>Not sure what&#x27;s going on, since there&#x27;s no way that the person would have access to firstnamemiddlename@gmail.com since it&#x27;s the same as mine, just without a period.