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Do you have a common name?

I do and have firstnamelastname@gmail.com. I get all sorts of emails from people with the same name who somehow believe they have my email address.

A common issue I've seen is websites treating a period in email addresses differently. All discussion about standards aside, the fact is

* To Gmail, firstname.lastname@gmail.com and firstnamelastname@gmail.com are the same.

* To a website like Paypal, they are different. So it will allow multiple signups with the 'same' email address.

I just had to troubleshoot this for my parents, who have separate Paypal accounts, but tied to the same email account.