I have a firstlast@gmail address, and I occasionally get e-mails intended for people with the same name.<p>Recently, a person with the same first and last name thought he owned my e-mail address. He signed up for several job searching e-mails from companies that did not verify e-mail address (which I promptly marked as spam). That person finally signed up for a FedEx.com account, and I was able to reset the password to access and get his phone number. I called him up to inform him of his error, and it sounded like the man was in his late 60s and thought I was an "IBM-er". A week after that, he stopped signing up for new services with my e-mail address. I can only guess a friend or family member told him how e-mail works.<p>Side note: FedEx.com should know better than not forcing users to verify their e-mail addresses at sign up.
I have my first-initial, last-name at Gmail, and I guess a lot of other people think they do too. I have been often mistaken for a guy who sells custom-made night lights, a woman applying for jobs in the airline industry, another woman in need of remedial driving education, and most comically, a member of local government in a foreign country, which has generated a seemingly endless stream of email for years.<p>I have contacted the senders to let them know of their mistake, but the same people keep sending me mail intended for someone else. In some cases I've given up. I can only imagine what the intended recipient is going through, missing out on their job application notices, or council meeting updates.
Before you use a bogus gmail, or your own email, for testing, consider mailinator.com . Anything@mailinator.com goes to a globally visible inbox. It's pretty convenient.