[ghporter]

I've started getting email intended for someone by the name of "Gloria" using a variation of my own Gmail address. "Gloria" uses a period in the user portion of MY address, and somehow either Gmail has accepted her account with that address, or "she" has just made the address up (I think the former).

Has anyone else had this happen to them? Any way to fix it?

[mattyb]

Its spam. I've had the same thing for markmylastname@gmail.com (instead of mattmylastname@gmail.com).

Report is as spam and gmail will bin it.

[ghporter]

I don't know if it really is spam. This "Gloria" person seems to have been using the address quite freely, as if it were actually "her" address. It's in the form "first.last@gmail.com" rather than "firstlast@gmail.com" and a lot of emails are coming to me for that address. In fact, I have a postal address for "Gloria" through an order confirmation email... I have toyed with sending a letter to that address explaining that "way back in the dawn of time, I got an invite for Gmail; back when these were scarce and you could count the number of gmail addresses without a computer..."

[mattyb]

You marking it as spam shouldn't impact whether its a valid email addy or not. Your account will consider it as spam. I consider all Amazon.xx email as spam for example.

[Jawbone54]

Oh, wow...I've been having the exact same thing happen to me.

The guy is actually an Atlanta-based photographer with my same first/last names and same middle initial. I've been getting client Emails for months. Once I didn't realize it was a mistaken Email and flipped when the customer started off by cussing him out.

I'll just mark it as spam and stop dealing with it. I've tried to fix the problem, but they keep sending it to this guy's address. Annoying!

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by mattyb 

You marking it as spam shouldn't impact whether its a valid email addy or not. Your account will consider it as spam. I consider all Amazon.xx email as spam for example.

Oh, I misunderstood your earlier post. Yes, I can mark it as spam, and I'll do that.

[LegendaryPinkOx]

as someone with a firstname.lastname@gmail.com account this concerns me greatly

[blitzi]

It’s actually a feature. Seriously.
Apparently one shouldn’t be able to sign up for firstname.lastname@gmail.com if firstnamelastname@gmail.com is already taken (and vice versa) but it seems that at some point it was possible, hence the delivery weirdness.

There was a discussion on arstechnica about this quite recently. Enlightening (and entertaining) read this way.

[Wiskedjak]

my gmail address is mylastname@gmail.com. I often get email intended for someonelse'firstname.mylastname@gmail.com, but the sender leaves off the 'firstname' part.

[ghporter]

Feature or not, it's bloody annoying and probably also annoying to anyone who thinks they have a unique address that ain't unique because Google doesn't recognize that period.

[mattyb]

Tried to register firstname.lastname@gmail.com for my name with no luck - bet spammers have it.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Feature or not, it's bloody annoying and probably also annoying to anyone who thinks they have a unique address that ain't unique because Google doesn't recognize that period.

Well, they seem to recognize the period when someone is *creating* an account, just not when sending emails. I wonder if the email intended for firstname.lastname@gmail.com gets to both firstname.lastname@gmail.com and firstnamelastname@gmail.com.

Google obviously dropped the ball here by only recognizing '.' separators in account creation.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by mattyb 

Tried to register firstname.lastname@gmail.com for my name with no luck - bet spammers have it.

hahaha I tried the same thing last night.

[brassplayersrock²]

is anyone else getting, try again, when sending off e-mail through gmail?

[seanc]

Yep, sending mail to my gmail with out the period works. I'm glad mine is relatively obscure.

[mduell]

Known "feature."