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Comment by v0tary | Hacker News Reader

Yes. I can prove that this is real. I had a Gmail account that I registered when I was younger and did exactly that - setup a forward to my alt (which over the years became my primary). A few years ago I started receiving emails for another person with my same name. Legit work emails, party invites and the like. Turns out that person was using my original email.

I never contacted anyone about this for fear Google would just delete both accounts to save their own asses.

Still receive those emails to this day.

However recent times have convinced me that it's time to move away from the big ol G. This is space issue is one of them.

mailcow anyone?

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> Yes. I can prove that this is real

There's also at least two alternative explanations.

I also get a lot of emails to an account I own from someone who keeps using my email instead of theirs. You'd think they would have noticed they aren't receiving them by now, but apparently not. Are you also totally sure that it's not just someone else entering an email address they don't own for work and party invites?

And for a second explanation, are you sure it wasn't hacked/stolen?

There's groups of people out there that bruteforce and then sell OG accounts, such as short twitter handles and common firstname.lastname email accounts.

The fact that the forwarding rules are still setup and working actually leads me to think it's more likely someone else stole the account rather than that it was deleted and recreated, assuming someone else really has access to it.

There's other possible ways your account could have been compromised too, like having a backup email address for it on some other email provider or domain that did go under or get compromised, but a weak password or a re-used password from a leak seem most likely for the compromise route.

Do you have evidence somehow that the account wasn't stole in that way?

The emails aren't just one way. I don't see the emails in my sent items, but when the receiving party replies (his boss) I see the original email that was sent from my old email address.

The party invite was from a real person, not those evite sites.

I can no longer login to the old account and my recovery options no longer work.

While yes, the possibility of a hacked account crossed my mind, but Gmail is pretty loud when someone logs in from a new ip.

This has been atleast 2 years now.

Maybe I should call him. He isn't doing well with his realtor sales.

Another explanation is the address changes Google introduced. I’m not sure when, but my firstlast@gmail.com became addressable as first.last@gmail.com. Someone else originally created first.last@gmail.com and I get their emails.

Periods have always been discarded by Gmail when routing mail, as well as signing in. If you own firstlast@gmail.com, you've owned first.last@gmail.com all along, as well as fi.r.s.t.la.s.t@gmail.com for that matter.

You're getting that other person's email because someone has the wrong address for them.

I also receive emails and invites for someone else but I actively use my Gmail account. I think it's just people misspelling email addresses.

I've got several of these for one active email in particular. I've always thought it was bad data entry. There is a cluster in the US south - Georgia, Texas and Alabama.

At first I tried to rectify the mistakes but gave up due to lack of response.

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