Can two people have the same email address?

[summerdays]

You have just reminded me that one of my children ordered a body shop card which failed to arrived so we complained. Then about 6 weeks after the order was placed we received a letter with a foreign stamp on it, and opened it to find the missing card. However there was no explanation of how or where it had been wandering!

But the local ones are good, another child mis-addressed a birthday card for someone in the neighbouring road, and luckily the postman looked at the names and delivered it to the right address.

 

[Globalti]

My Dad once flew to the USA for a medical conference. During the flight he got chatting with his American neighbour who promised she would send him a copy of the book she had written.

Months later a parcel arrived from the USA addressed to: "Sir Barry (Surname), Newcastle, England". Amazing.

 

[coffeejo]

There's someone in the UK who has a similar email address to me and frequently mistypes it when placing online orders so that I get her emails. If I chose to, I could have taken advantage of the situation as I was left knowing a lot about her. At first, I would contact the company and explain the situation and ask them to change the email address and inform the woman. But now when it happens, I roll my eyes, mutter something about "some people never learn" and just delete them.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

I guess Royal Mail's more reliable than Australia Post, then. I sometimes get mail for people living nearby, which makes me wonder how much mail I've missed out on.

For years I thought I was missing out on mail, then I found it all under the floorboards. Lots of it.

 

[Andrew_Culture]

The Royal Mail in Ipswich are very diligent - when I shut down my PO Box they continued sending me the mail delivered to it!

 

[asterix]

@User, I should prepare to move out. They may well have sold your house by now.

 

[Fnaar]

Hit 'reply all' and try to interest them in helping you to get 350 million dollars out of your Nigerian bank account.

 

[buggi]

there is a guy at work (just started) who has my name, but his surname is my forename and my surname is his forename. (our names can be transposed either way and when you transpose mine i become male)
the contact list at work lists you by your surname first. He's in the US, I'm in the UK.

this is going to be fun.

 

[Fnaar]

Have you ever tried googling to see who else has your name? I have. I'm also an American comedian, and I used to dabble in black magic, apparently.

 

[coffeejo]

Have you ever tried googling to see who else has your name? I have. I'm also an American comedian, and I used to dabble in black magic, apparently.

I have several PhDs

 

[coffeejo]

So you would appreciate the 'doctor doctor' jokes, then Jo

 

[coffeejo]

Don't worry, I graduated from my school boy humour stage ages ago..........well at least 2 days ago

Did drRM have words?

 

[Markymark]

Bit late to this but you can't have the same email to receive mail. Only yiu can receive any email to this address unless they have your password.

It is very easy however to send email and use yiur email address as the Reply to. However, if anyone ever replied, it would come to you and not them.

 

[Melonfish]

No, it is an impossibility.

abc@xyz.com is one email address, no one else can have that. What they can have however is abc@xyz.co.uk, abc@123.com or any other variation however they cannot have the same one.

When an email is sent, DNS looks up the domain for the server (xyz.com) and then the mail server takes over. In short, the mail server sends it to the user which in this case would be abc.

It is the same as a postman delivering a letter (in fact, one of the email protocols is actually called the 'Post Office Protocol'), letters addressed to Mr/Mrs abc at XYZ on 123 Road shall always go to that recipient, they won't go to someone else (unless you're called victor).

This ^

just add the mail to your spam folder and you're sorted