Ok so has this happened to anyone else before ? my gmail address is seperated by a period but another person with the same exact name except he has no period @gmail.com. so it be something like. my.name@gmail.com <- mine myname@gmail.com <- another guy i keep getting his emails. Is there any way i can contact the gmail team about this as all i seem to find is them saying on thier help file this can't happen but it does happen to me all of the time. I have even gotten emails from this persons family. It's really frustrating as i keep getting spam and crap i didn't sign up for.
Read this thread. http://knol.google.com/k/lanny-m/getting-someone-elses-mail-the-dots/arh964fu2mnl/7# Common issue looks like. john
I've had this as well, though I only get one or two messages a month and seems like you're getting a lot more than me. I've always thought it was an error on the part of whoever gave out my email address sans dots but it would seem like there's actually an error on the part of Google here. Very odd. Not wanting to threadjack, but on a kind of related note, Google also allows you to add a +whatever suffix onto your email address meaning that me+blah@gmail.com would still point to me@gmail.com. It's very useful for the purposes of signing up to various services with a 'throwaway' address that you can filter out when the spam starts creeping in. The + character is acceptable according to whoever sets the standards for email addresses, but 99% of signup forms with which I try and use a + suffix tell me I've got invalid characters in my email address, making this feature kind of worthless in the real world. Edit: looks like vBulletin's auto email link parser also doesn't recognise the + sign
I was told when I signed up (by my school's IT department) that once I had the hypothetical 'ab.cd'@gmail.com it was mine - no-one could have a.bcd@ or abcd@ etc; Gmail is blind to that sort of thing. So you're not 'receiving someone else's mail', you're receiving mail intended for your address. Maybe the sender is misspelling it? Or perhaps someone is using your email address whenever they're required to give one in exchange for some commercial offer or something.
If it's the original issue then it's a bit of a security risk; I could go to any gmail address and create a new one with a period in it and recieve their emails.
Gmail ignores periods in email addresses. Try sending a mail to myname@gmail.com and it'll come through to you. The email you're receiving is from someone who has an incorrect address for whoever it's meant for.
A quick way to test would be to email the address that you're supposedly receiving email for that was intended for them. If the email goes to you, then the period makes no difference, and you should reply and tell them they have the wrong email. (I.e., email myname@gmail.com, if it goes through to you at my.name@gmail.com, then email the person who was emailing myname@gmail.com and tell them they are wrong.)
A lot of the spam I get doesn't have dots in it. Gmail will send all of these things to the same inbox: test.user@gmail.com testuser@gmail.com testu.s.e.r@gmail.com test.user+whatever@gmail.com te.s.t.use.r+anything@gmail.com To test this, try signing up for a new google account with your current username, but with a few extra full stops. It won't let you.
as everybody else is saying this isn't a glitch, it's just people mistakenly sending you stuff. you should probably reply and let them know they've got the wrong email address.
