Recieving Emails addressed to someone else

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Dirk

If 6 Was 9
Location
Watchet
I've recently had 3 emails from FedEx that were meant for someone else.
I've forwarded them on to the correct recipient.
They have been addresed to : name name@gmail.com
My address is: samename dot samename@gmail.com
Gmail seems to be ignoring the 'dot' between names.
How can this happen. It's a bit worrying, as I'm thinking that maybe an email meant for me has been sent to the wrong recipient at some time.
Any ideas?
 

Pale Rider

Legendary Member
Any ideas?

No, but I'm enjoying spending your pension.
 
Good morning,

Does this help?

https://support.google.com/mail/ans...e accidentally adds dots,john.smith@gmail.com

It says that Ian.Smith@ is the same as IanSmith@ and Ian.Hello.Smith@

If not have you checked the email header to see who the email was really addressed to, there is a "display" value and a "real" value in the email header. You may need to do a search to find out how to see the headers as they aren't always easy to find.

Bye

Ian
 

CanucksTraveller

Macho Business Donkey Wrestler
Location
Hertfordshire
Spam or scam attempt more than likely.

Although mistakes can happen. I once opened an account purely for scam baiting and chose the name of a fairly famous female TV presenter so it read "(famous lady's name)@yahoo.co.uk
I was very surprised at the genuine, wrongly addressed emails I got for her over the next few years... an interior designer she had contracted with, her agent making TV arrangements, a florist that she used regularly. Turns out her actual email address was exactly like my fake one, but ending in ".com"
 
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biggs682

Touch it up and ride it
Location
Northamptonshire
So many big companies have issues with many mundane tasks .

One of my main suppliers has issues with getting the vat content displayed on its invoices .
Another one can't get parcel tracking information to show on its ordering system and its been like that for a year ^_^
 

glasgowcyclist

Charming but somewhat feckless
Location
Scotland
I've recently had 3 emails from FedEx that were meant for someone else.
I've forwarded them on to the correct recipient.
They have been addresed to : name name@gmail.com
My address is: samename dot samename@gmail.com
Gmail seems to be ignoring the 'dot' between names.
How can this happen. It's a bit worrying, as I'm thinking that maybe an email meant for me has been sent to the wrong recipient at some time.
Any ideas?

They're spam. Delete them and don't worry.

Edit to add: As others have pointed out, Gmail ignores the dots anyway. However, a useful tip to see which companies leak your email address is to use the + symbol in your address. Anything after the + symbol is ignored by your email provider and comes to your inbox anyway. So, for example, if I subscribe to the New York Times I'd give my email address as glasgow.cyclist+NYT@email.com. For my E-bay purchases I'd use glasgow.cyclist+ebay@email.com. That way their systems only have a unique alias and if I start getting spam from other sources on one of those I'll know where the leak was.

Handy for completing surveys and competition entries too.
 
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Alex321

Veteran
Location
South Wales
Gmail ignores dots in the part before the @

This can be useful if you want what appears to be multiple email addresses but all actually going to the same place.

There will not be anybody with the actual email address those emails are being sent to, so it is almost certainly just spam.
 
I've recently had 3 emails from FedEx that were meant for someone else.
I've forwarded them on to the correct recipient.
They have been addresed to : name name@gmail.com
My address is: samename dot samename@gmail.com
Gmail seems to be ignoring the 'dot' between names.
How can this happen. It's a bit worrying, as I'm thinking that maybe an email meant for me has been sent to the wrong recipient at some time.
Any ideas?
Thats odd. Google does not allow registering of new emails with existing usernames even when dots are introduced. It has been security feature. My guess is someone is scamming FedEx or another party by putting fake email address knowing that routing will take place to original assigned username whose name had no dots.
 

Brandane

Legendary Member
Location
Costa Clyde
I have received emails sent to me as the intended recipient, but the sender had misspelt my name in the address. Just one letter wrong, but surely it shouldn't have reached me?
 
Good morning,

In an email address the decimal point should be stripped out of the local part, Ian.Smith should be converted to IanSmith before being processed any further.

So all you did by forwarding it was send it to yourself because the two addresses are the same.

The local part is processed differently to the domain such as gmail.com where the point has a meaning, email address can be a lot more complex than many people realise, for example IanSmith@ is the same as IanSmith+CycleChat and IanSmith(ToDayIsFro)@ is also the same and Ian.Smith@ or IanSmith@

Below is from the Internet's definition of an email address with my bold https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5322#page-14

atext = ALPHA / DIGIT / ; Printable US-ASCII
"!" / "#" / ; characters not including
"$" / "%" / ; specials. Used for atoms.
"&" / "'" /
"*" / "+" /
"-" / "/" /
"=" / "?" /
"^" / "_" /
"`" / "{" /
"|" / "}" /
"~"


atom = [CFWS] 1*atext [CFWS]

dot-atom-text = 1*atext *("." 1*atext)

dot-atom = [CFWS] dot-atom-text [CFWS]

specials = "(" / ")" / ; Special characters that do
"<" / ">" / ; not appear in atext
"[" / "]" /
":" / ";" /
"@" / "\" /
"," / "." /
DQUOTE

Both atom and dot-atom are interpreted as a single unit, comprising
the string of characters that make it up. Semantically, the optional
comments and FWS surrounding the rest of the characters are not part
of the atom; the atom is only the run of atext characters in an atom,
or the atext and "." characters in a dot-atom.

Bye

Ian
 
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