Ask HN: GMail Username Issue | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: GMail Username Issue

21 pointssganesh23 comments

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 & 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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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).

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.

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....

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.)

"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#

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.

"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.

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.

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

So you registered the account recently, and when you did you somehow "supplanted" the existing account? Or have you had the account for a while and suddenly started getting this guy's mail?

I registered 'sai.ganesh@gmail.com' when GMail was in the invite stages. And a few months later, I started noticing these other emails that are being sent to 'saiganesh@gmail.com'. I ignored those, and slowly over time, all my Google stuff have been associated with this email address, and I'm getting password reset emails, almost every week lately :( Hence, this request.

Just set up a filter to move any email send to joenone to a special folder (tag) and look at it once in a while.

I set up an email with a dot in it early on as well, but I can still access my account without the dot and get emails for that as well.

As others have stated the problem is that someone thinks their address is saiganesh@gmail.com when it really isn't but they use it anyway.

If you can find another way to contact this other person you might try it to tell him that his email is not what he thinks it is.

If I send an email to j.o.e.non.e@gmail.com, you'll get it.

The dots are superficial -- you can add them or remove them as you want. The login form for gmail even respects this, as I can add or subtract dots however I want.

My email address is barry.melton -- I can send and receive email as barrymelton as well, or b.a.r.rymelton, or barry.melt.on or whatever.

Long thread on the issue: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=2d9f3...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The gmail help forum: http://mail.google.com/support/

Thank you. Been There. Done That.

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