- This topic has 38 replies, 34 voices, and was last updated 5 years ago by rossburton.
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Do you have an email Doppelganger?
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NobeerinthefridgeFree Member
I do.
Had it for a few years now, tried contacting google about it, but they seem very confused…
There appears to be a guy in Canada with not only my name, but either a similar email address or the same email address, as the amount of mail I get for him is unreal. I’ve had meeting requests from other big honchos in the Albertan agricultural scene, requests for jobs from young agricultural students, special invites to the local conservative party (I did respond to that one) messages from his mother, actually ended up having a nice conversation with the old dear, she had Scots heritage and loves a whisky for what it’s worth, I even had his wife email me to tell him what he’s getting for his tea.
Latest one today is from an artisan (steady comrade Binners) food company with his receipt of a load of stuff he’s ordered, which is kinda concerning, as it’s into the realms of financial transactions, I’ve emailed em, to make them aware of the mistake.
I can’t even contact the guy, as I don’t know what his actual email address is. So, Greg Bowie, agricultural Tory artisan of Alberta, if you’re on here, gimme a shout!.
Anyone ever get someone else’s email?.
jam-boFull MemberYup. I got in early on gmail so have my proper name with no extra numbers/letter/hyphens etc.
I get all sorts
perchypantherFree MemberWhy not email his mother and get his email address?
She’s bound to know it.
Either that or start sending saucy emails to his wife.
Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition
Latest Singletrack VideosFresh Goods Friday 696: The Middlin...slowblokeFree MemberThere was a bug when googlemail first came out so that if you registered Fred.bloggs and someone else registered fredbloggs they were both the same mailbox and you can both access it. I shared my email with some chap high up in an evangelical church in the US as a result. I just got another email address.
Could be your problem?
NobeerinthefridgeFree MemberAye, mines is just my name as you say Jam bo, probably that.
Perchy, don’t you be sendin me saucy emails, ya durty big bugger.
hodgyndFree MemberYep ..I’ve had emails from Yankee Doodle land telling me my application for grants that I’ve applied for have been approved…not insignificant sums either ..of course this could be a scam operation and I never followed up ( after the first $mil.went into my account )!😁
perchypantherFree MemberPerchy, don’t you be sendin me saucy emails, ya durty big bugger.
I’ve been trying to for months.
I keep getting the guy from the Clyde1 breakfast show instead.
NobeerinthefridgeFree MemberHaha! god knows how many times I’ve had that one, I actually do resemble that eejit a bit. At least now that the talented Bowie has passed, that one seems to have quietened down…
blitzFull MemberYep, Same as Jambo, got on gmail when it was in beta so have my name.surname@gmail.com.
I’ve got two main doppelgängers. An Aussie in the real estate game who cheated on his wife and got found out (had an email from the bit on the side) and the most prolific is a Texan bloke who seems to have money and dating issues as I get loads of dating site registrations confirmation emails as well as credit applications.
No way of contacting them so just dump their stuff in the junk folder. It amazes me that they don’t clock the fact that they register for stuff and don’t get any emails?!
martinhutchFull MemberI’ve just noticed I have a Strava doppleganger – identical username, from the same town. Sent him a follow request just to weird him out. 🙂
petecFree Membergoogle email address pay no attention to fullstops of course
so name.surname@gmail.com is the same as NameSurname@gmail.com. Try it.
I do have quite an early gmail account, so it’s my name with middle initial. There’s the chap without the initial, and one with a second initial. We’ve all corresponded quite a lot. One’s a rugby coach in the west country, and one is a town councillor in Maine (if memory serves). It makes for an eclectic conversation.
One of the first things I did when the kids were born was sign them up for gmail with a vaguely normal address. So it’s their names as opposed to namesurname54864873873773737@gmail.com.
amediasFree MemberI have a few, same issue, early Gmail and easy to mistype address.
The longest running one is a guy with the same initials as me but different first name in the US, I receive all his American Express card balance notifications and statements. I have tried, oh how I have tried, to get them to stop sending them to me but they never respond to my emails, I gave up a few years ago and now just chuckle when I get his ‘transaction declined’ emails when he maxes out his card again, normally within days of paying some of it off.
I also got some e-tickets for a gig for a woman in Australia, actually managed to track her down on FB and forward them on to her after the ticket company were no help, she was very appreciative!
scaredypantsFull MemberThere’s a very widely published guy (in a field closeish to my work) in the US who has the same name as me. I occasionally get emails for him. Have considered hijacking some of his reputation for my CV too !
Also a GP in Derbyshire who doesn’t get many of the invitations he gets sent for committee mettings etc – I think that’s pretty clever of him, TBH
More entertainingly, I get emails from the local council with loads of contract documents and finance bollocks on a fairly regular basis
DezBFree MemberNo, I don’t think I do.. however I do get the very occasional email asking if I could supply aluminium step ladders or stainless oojamiflip brackets… I presumed they were a bizarre form of phishing, but maybe were actually meant for a similar address to mine.
riddochFull MemberI was so early on Gmail I only have my surname, so i get various emails from Austrailia and Canada where whoever has entered the address has dropped off the initial.
Telstra, three and a few others spamy ones I ignore but when it’s something like a job interview request I respond in the hope they can find some way of contacting them.
Annoyingly for a while one of the work email systems I was using autocompleted to one of the other addresses so instead of forwarding something to my personal email it would go elsewhere. Fortunately my life is so boring it was nothing exciting of incriminating.
GrahamSFull MemberOne of the first things I did when the kids were born was sign them up for gmail with a vaguely normal address. So it’s their names
I took the much geekier approach and registered our own domain (a couple of decades ago when there were still good ones to be had).
So me, the missus, kids and my parents can basically have anythingwelike@ourowndomain.com 🙂
Tiger6791Full MemberYes I have my full name @hotmail.com
& my Doppelganger has the same name @hotmail.co.uk
As we are both British we just fwd the email with a polite “This must be yours”
spooky_b329Full MemberThose of you with shared inboxes, might be as be to send yourself an email and not read it, and tell the other user just to reply back to themselves. You are putting their emails in spam, they are probably getting yours also 🙂
HounsFull MemberI have an Australian Dr. The odd email I just reply back to sender ( usually medical stuff ) saying you have the wrong person. However I did have one a couple of months ago where the sender was being rather pervy towards a Thai nurse, I replied back asking if it was fitting for a medical professional to view co-workers in that way
do wonder what emails of mine he gets though
sadmadalanFull MemberI have a doppelganger in Glasgow and I regularly get quotes sent to me for various bits of engineering to which I generally reply to the sender with their mistake.
More painful is that he set up a PayPal account linked to my email address. I cannot access it because I don’t know the answer to his questions and he cannot access the email!! I’ve sent him emails about it and tried to get Facebook to sort it out. So far no success. Every so often I have another go.
crimsondynamoFree MemberYes, namesake in Canada. I feel I’ve been on a life journey with him. I’ve had e-mails about dental appointments and overdue library books, but also his wedding, then his child’s christening and now he coaches his child’s school football. Heartwarming stuff.
JakesterFree Membergoogle email address pay no attention to fullstops of course
so name.surname@gmail.com is the same as NameSurname@gmail.com. Try it.
I frequently get this as I have firstnamelastname@gmail.com
What I don’t understand is why people who *think* they have my email address keep using it to register for stuff (Yes, I’m looking at you, young American female Honda owner, and you, American university student) when clearly it doesn’t work. At all.
mrmonkfingerFree MemberI have
name.surname@gmail.com
initial.surname@gmail.com
surname.initial@gmail.com
All of which were setup way back when, and I can’t for the life of me remember the password for the first two. Making it worse, is that google don’t believe that I’m me so won’t do a password recovery doohickey for me.
My mum insists on sending email to the first one and then phoning up and saying “did you get my email?” She accidentally got it stuck somehow into the gmail “recently used” list and can’t get rid of it.
davidrFull MemberWell it looks like he used to be chair of Alberta Beef Producers so maybe they can help?
New project between McDonald's and Alberta Beef Producers highlights sustainability
https://crsb.ca/about-us/council/
[Not sure why on earth I even searched for this. Oh yes, reading patent reports otherwise…]
MoreCashThanDashFull MemberA guy with my name is a senior IT manager in our parent organisation – I often used to get invited to meetings where my input would be “greatly appreciated”. Maybe I should have gone along to one and ruined his career.
Eventually I was getting copied in on quite important and sensitive stuff, which stopped when I threatened to report the IT department to the Data Guardian.
I did get invited to their Christmas party last week – anyone fancy Telford Christmas Markets?
NorthwindFull MemberNot in email but I’m constantly locking some poor bugger out of his internet banking because he has the login I wanted. Sorry dude
PePPeRFull MemberI have a phone number that every so often I get a flood of phone calls from asking for Sarah. We’ve spoken a couple of times over the years, and generally she just rings Vodafone and it gets sorted out for a while. We don’t know why it happens. I’ve even moved from Vodafone to Three and it still happens.
tomparkinFull MemberI have an obvious email address, too, and consequently quite a lot of email for other people.
The most prevalent is for a chap who seems active in the New Democratic Party in Toronto. I get a fair amount of mail inviting me to various fora and events, or trying to arrange meetings or what have you. It’s usually relatively easy to sort out.
One that I cannot seem to shake is an mis-configured email for some sort of tax/business service in New Zealand. I get periodic mails saying “here’s your latest bill”. But also mail from the guy’s clients about billing, when they’re making the next payment, etc, etc. I have tried to sort this out a number of times, even had sheepish sounding responses back from some of the parties, but I still get the mail. I can’t fathom why (a) you wouldn’t notice you were missing this sort of important information; and (b) why you wouldn’t sort it out sharpish once you knew it was going to the wrong person.
My favourite was a fellow trying to contact a Tom Parkin who had engaged him to do some family tree research. I politely responded that he had the wrong address, but it took a while to convince him. I kept saying things like “It’s really not me — I have no idea who John and Phylis are, and I don’t care where they got married in 1939”, and he kept coming back with reminders about where we’d met 🙂
bigjimFull Memberyes I get a lot of email that should go to his .ca instead of my .com
FlaperonFull MemberYep. I get an ex-Boeing employee’s pension paperwork through on an irritatingly regular basis. I’ve given up replying and just read them sadly when I look at what he’s getting compared to my predicted pension.
steverFree MemberCurrently seeing a lot of appointment stuff for a chiropodist clinic in Florida and some fishing club. Password resets for Instagram. Oh and billing from Verizon ISP (couldn’t care less about the privacy issue). Thinks it’s the full stop thing. Mine has last name.firstname@gmail.com, his doesn’t.
V8_shin_printFree MemberFlorida hunting license, sent annually (might come in useful some day as it’s in my name??)
Bourbon discount offers for Melbourne (also could come in useful)
and a receipt for purchases from the Paul Daniels Magic Shop intended for a nice chap in Newark 🙂
molgripsFree MemberPassword resets for Instagram
Now that you could have fun with. Especially if it’s linked to his Facebook!
andytherocketeerFull MemberMy other me where I used to work was the CEO of our US sister company. Sadly they never mixed up the 2 payrolls or anything.
And where I work now, there was a bug* in Lotus Notes where you could type in the first few letters of someone’s name in the email To field, select the right one and hit return, but it would actually fill in the To field with a totally different name from the shortlist of results. Not random, but actually repeatable.
Not a massive problem if it was an email between 1-2 people, but it’s a royal PITA when a whole email list or 5 is also included and people don’t know the difference between reply and reply-all.
(* there were of course another million bugs too)
I know the gmail interpretation of . and – in an email name conflicted with Sky TV subs, and you could basically take over someone else’s account with their renewable payment details.
muppetWranglerFree MemberFor a few years i used to get emails from some military sort in Oman. They were normally sorting out travel arrangements for other visiting military srts and although they used my email address they headed WO2 MuppetWrangler (but my real name obvs).
As they were trying to organise a thing I always wrote back explaining the error and got a nice ‘thanks for letting us know’ email in return and then a few months later they’d make exactly the same error again. Hasn’t happened for a couple of years now so I guess they eventually updated their contact list.
rossburtonFree MemberMe and the kids have the same as GrahamS here, I’ve a personal domain currently hosted on Google Apps (registered back when it was free for small organisations) so the kids have firstname@mydomain.com. Very low amount of spam and no misdirected mail, but my wife is <initial>.<surname>@gmail.com and her inbox must be 50% mail for someone else…
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