

Ask HN: GMail Username Issue - sganesh

I have a user id to gmail that is joe.none@gmail.com. Gmail has assigned joenone@gmail.com to someone else. All his personal (including his banking details) emails are showing up in my inbox and also, he tries to reset the password every other day and that also shows up, in all the emails that is associated with my gmail account. Gmail says joe.none &#38; joenone are the same email addresses, but I can guarantee you this is not the case. Has anyone run into this issue? If yes, please direct me in the right direction to solve it. Thank you.
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nbpoole
Couldn't this just be a person who doesn't know how email works? Maybe they
use joenone@aol.com and just assume that gmail.com works the same?

The reason I suggest it is that the "dots don't matter" behavior has been in
Gmail for a while. I'd be surprised to find that they assigned two people the
"same" username. Anecdotally, I've actually had people sign up to websites
using one of my email addresses (ie: a random person used one of my Gmail
accounts as the backup email address on his Gmail account).

~~~
3dFlatLander
I signed up for gmail and have a simple account name in the form of {common
firstname}{first letter of last name}@gmail.com. The amount of crap that has
started to show up in my inbox over the last year is completely ludicrous--and
I believe it's all from people who, like you say, just don't know how email
works.

As of today, my account is associated with seven addresses--that is, seven
people said my email address was their alternative email address. 2,000
messages in the spam folder over ~1 month. Sometimes a dozen can hit my inbox
per day; But, I'm guessing these are legit newsletters that people use my
address for. And someone in South America used it to sign up for a facebook
account. I was getting slammed with his friend requests and lost password
requests until I just filtered them out.

 _sigh_ ... Rant over, and I feel better.

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beagle3
Probably the guy thought he had the gmail address and filled it in forms when
actually he didn't.

If one of these emails has his phone number, call him. If not, contact e.g. a
bank that sends email to him, tell them "you've got the email wrong. Please
notify your client because I have no way of reaching him, and you probably
do". The fraud department of the bank will be able to take care of that
quickly - you can start with "either this is a fraud, or a mistake, but here's
the story ..." when you talk to them.

It might be helpful to tell them (and hopefully relay to him) that this is
YOUR email address, you've had it for a while.

Expect the guy to ask you to sign over your email address to him, because his
name is "Joe None" and your violating his property, or something crazy like
that. Don't get angry, and definitely don't do anything stupid like
impersonating him, logging in to his bank account or anything like that.

This is not legal advice, and I hope you won't need any after you do the right
thing and try to resolve this....

~~~
sganesh
Thank you for the advice. I have not logged into any of his accounts, but
definitely have to reply to some of the "marriage proposals" he received, from
another account saying that is not the right address.I'm in the US and I'm
very sure he is in India. (All the banks, job sites, mortgage quotes, ecards,
marriage proposals, friends sending stupid jokes are all from India.)

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Deadsunrise
"Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or
remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination
address; they'll all go to your inbox, and only yours."

<http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=10313#>

~~~
sganesh
This exactly is the issue I'm running into. I am getting emails for
'joenone@gmail.com' sent to my inbox. I have that person's bank details, most
usernames and passwords, and his attempts to reset the password on the
account. When I registered, I got the "joe.none@gmail.com" email address. And
everyone (including the GMail forum as someone else mentioned) seems to point
to this link, saying GMail does do that. That I understand. But I need those
emails to the other person to stop. I have personally replied to lot of people
saying they have reached someone else. And it's been annoying. That's why I'm
asking for help, posting here on HN, if i can reach one of those GMail folks,
lurking here.

~~~
bmm6o
"But I need those emails to the other person to stop"

The dot is a distraction in this case. He is passing out your email address,
thinking it is his. When he does this, you get emails intended for him. This
is not a technical problem, and doesn't really have a technical solution.

~~~
notaddicted
Although you could set up a filter on the "to" field to erase all the mis-
addressed emails, I just looked at the gmail filters and I didn't see any way
to autoreply to them, but at least you don't have to see them ... technical
semi-solution.

~~~
xuki
Fwd those email to another email and set up auto reply there. Problem solved
=).

------
pkamb
Long thread on the issue:
[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=2d9f3...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=2d9f38bf10a53893&hl=en)

Short Story: There's been an 'urban legend' that people from the early gmail
invite days could register the same email, the only difference being dots. The
more likely scenario is that he's filling in the wrong email on web forms,
it's emailing you, and it's not emailing him at all. He doesn't have access to
the email.

Is there anything that proves he also has access to a dot-version of the email
account? You being sent emails from banks only proves that he's filling that
email into a form, not that he has access to the account.

------
codenerdz
joe.none@gmail.com, j.oenone@gmail.com, joenone@gmail.com, joenon.e@gmail.com
is the same email/account as far as google is concerned. You should be able to
login into your gmail/google account with either of these and your existing
password simply because google doesnt care about that dot in the username. So
your problem is not with gmail, but with whoever is using your email account
to register for things.

------
natemartin
I have this exact same issue. My nickname "nat" can be short for both
Nathaniel and Natelie. And apparently there is a Natelie with the same last
name as me, and she seems to use my email address with a dot in it. I've been
getting frequent flier emails, school emails, and more. Whenever it is an
automated email, I contact their customer service and explain the situation,
then unsubscribe.

If the email seems to be personal, I respond and ask them to have "Natelie"
contact me, but she never has.

I agree with you, it's very frustrating. I don't have any solution, but I'll
be following this thread closely.

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Fuzzwah
I have the same issue. I had collected a number of signup emails for
sites/services and finally when I received an email from a real person they
were able to communicate with the person who's non-dotted address my dotted
address had seemed to have taken over.

My gmail account has been around since invite beta.

I figure that somewhere along the lines google changed their system from
dotted and non-dotted addresses being unique and accounts made before this
have been affected.

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noahc
I have the exact same issue with noah.clark@gmail.com and noahclark@gmail.com

I've probably gotten HUNDREDS of e-mails for noahclark@gmail.com (I can tell
by checking the to field) in my noah.clark@gmail.com. I know where he lives,
what type of art he collects, major purchases, and some pretty significant
family issues as well as the homework he has been assigned.

I just do my best to notify who ever sent the e-mail that they have the wrong
address.

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sganesh
FYI: I created my gmail account on 8/28/04. And the other one I started
receiving it on 11/13/04.

~~~
nyrulez
If you can get in touch with this guy that would get you close. how about
emailing this userid at yahoo[.com,.co.in], hotmail, aol etc and see if you
hit jackpot ? Or you could reply to one of his friends and just if you can in
touch with this other guy via another channel ?

All this is assuming that the other guy cannot get into this "common" gmail
account and you are not enjoying looking at all the other emails that you get.

------
yanw
The gmail help forum: <http://mail.google.com/support/>

~~~
sganesh
Thank you. Been There. Done That.

