from Hacker News

Ask HN: Gmail – getting emails intended for others

by dirtydroog on 5/29/20, 9:55 AM with 1 comments

It appears my name and middle initial are extremely common. To date, in my gmail account I've received highly personal emails intended for other people. They're not spam or phishing emails either. These include:

- police reports

- job offers

- draft divorce settlements

- bills

- sea cadet schedules

It's probably due to gmail ignoring delimiters in email addresses, but are these emails being sent to all variations of the email address? When it's something like a job offer I do notify the sender that they've got the wrong email address, but this is all a bit concerning.

  • by 11874442 on 5/29/20, 10:20 AM

    I have this same problem. I have firstname.middlename@gmail.com and I regularly get emails that are sent to firstnamemiddlename@gmail.com.

    They are real emails too, banking with sensitive info pdfs, signup emails, etc.

    Not sure what's going on, since there's no way that the person would have access to firstnamemiddlename@gmail.com since it's the same as mine, just without a period.