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Comment by liquidgecka | Hacker News Reader

Yea.. try having a short (5 character) @ gmail.com address.. For _years_ I have dealt with this issue. Every time I seem to finally get things to not automatically get added I get hit with another round of lazy google engineers that don't add a UI option to disable this silliness.

Though, due to the short address I also get hundreds of legit calendar invites that were just sent to the wrong people. I swear I know the whereabouts of half the people in the country with names either starting with, or ending with that combination. =/

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Same issue here; yoga memberships, rugby clubs, password resets for their real email address. I haven’t had a bank password reset come through yet, but it is a matter of time. Some of my namesakes, meh, they’re not so smart. Thankfully I don’t use Google calendar, or I could see it being a real mess because many of those emails are invites from other people who either got it wrong, or the namesake is handing out the address he wishes he had.

I have a very short email, just 3 letters @outlook and I get stuff all the time from people signing up to things. I found that the only way to stop the constant stream of update and emails or whatever is the moment I get an email about "your new account" I go to the site, reset the password to something random and then unsubscribe from all messages.

That is so mean, and so well deserved.

Obligatory https://xkcd.com/1279/

I have the same problem. I've thought about sending out Christmas Cards to all the random people that have revealed to me a little too much information by not minding their email address.

Somebody misprinted a flier for a local town meeting.. the email was SUPPOSED to be congresman.<myname>@gmail.com but instead it got cut off to just <myname>@gmail.com. I started getting a wave of hate mail asking how I could hate firemen so much! At first I couldn't figure out what was happening but eventually I devised that the town had gone broke (this was 2009) and needed to lay off a bunch of workers, including firemen.

A coworker convinced me to try and see what the most outlandish thing I could say and still be believed was. Some of the toppers:

1) I don't know why we need firemen. My has has never even caught fire!

2) My wife cheated on me once with a fireman and now I am getting my revenge!

3) I believe in privatizing fire service, when the need arises the market will find a solution!

#1 could sound like a challenge to the wrong people. Please be careful.

I toohave received emails intended for others. One time I was included ina group email which kept going back and forth and they would not stop emailing me after asking several times. I just started replying with ridiculous answers to the questions and they finally stopped. So I don't blame you, just be careful.

Really? You must know someone from the original gmail team because really short addresses (< 6 chars i believe) were not supported specifically for that reason (anyone who got an exception instantly regretted it). Maybe they relaxed it later on...

yea.. me. =)

I also made spam@gmail.com and basically broke gmail (too many emails to a single destination for the system to handle in those days).. but I got an AWESOME trove of spam reports to use as testing data! =)

Mine's that length and of similar context. They should used my address to train filters. Over the years, the spam detection has gotten much better. I probably get a dozen a day that make it into my inbox now. It used to be tens or more. I think the smart labels really helped.

On the plus side, I have an account on everything.

So 6 chars was a cut-off? Not sure if I should count myself lucky as mine is 6 chars and I get unbelievable amounts of crap because of it.

Odd. I have a 6 letter gmail, keep it fairly public, and have never got a gcal invite at all (legitimate or not).

Likely not a common combination of characters. Most people reporting issues seem to have commonname@gmail

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