Comment by bigstrat2003 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bigstrat2003 | Hacker News Reader

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I have one like that. I have the email first.last@gmail.com, and I have a very uncommon last name. Lo and behold, Google let some dude in Australia who happens to share my name sign up with firstlast@gmail.com. According to the docs the two should be equivalent, so they shouldn't have let him sign up, but they did... and now I get his email all the time. I have gotten job offers, bills from medical offices, even one follow up email from his therapist. And lots and lots of ads, of course. I have tried to let people know (when it's a real person contacting me) to let this guy know about the email situation, but either they don't reach out to him or he doesn't care. At this point I just delete all the emails meant for him without reading them, and figure if he misses out on a job offer or something... I tried my best.

Still, bizarre that the situation was allowed to occur in the first place by Google. Clearly they need to beef up their account creation checks a bit.

> I have the email first.last@gmail.com, and I have a very uncommon last name. Lo and behold, Google let some dude in Australia who happens to share my name sign up with firstlast@gmail.com.

What evidence do you have that this happened, aside from the fact that you're receiving mail intended for him and sent to that address?

Unless you have something much stronger than that, chances are the other guy actually has firstlast2@gmail.com (or whatever) and frequently forgets to add the number.

If this story is true, this would appear to be a simple vector for hijacking email intended for other gmail users. Hard to understate the severity if true.

Have you tested whether you can receive email directed to firstlast@gmail.com? Perhaps theirs is really firstlastt@gmail.com and all their contacts "correct" it.

This feels like a bug that he snuck through early or during a temporary window, before Google started defaulting to . as an ignored alias. Maybe not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Have you ever tried just logging in as firstlast@gmail.com? If it works, with the usual password you use for first.last@gmail.com, it makes me think he has firstlastt@gmail.com or something similar and people sending him emails input it wrong, which causes them to send it to you. Maybe he also inputs it wrong sometimes when he is signing up for stuff.

Do you have proof? Really, firstlast@gmail.com is your account, even if you use first.last to sign in. People simply give out email addresses that don’t belong to them. Plain and simple. 100%, this is just some person giving out firstlast@gmail.com as their email addresses because it sounds good to them.

I observed a similar issue and years ago a Googler reached out after I bitched about it on HN and looked into it.

They claimed that it was a typo and I believe them. Places don’t validate email and people make alot of typos.

Do you have any proof that that separate address exists, with its own account, mailbox and such, and it is not just someone putting your email in the email field?

I have the same problem. There are about 5-7 active idiots using “firstlast@gmail.com” and I get them all.

Suspect their real email is something like “firstlast10” or “firstlest” (minor spelling variant). Not sure if they deliberately misspell their email or are just stupid.

For a while really thought amount was compromised.

Slowly I realized they are just idiots and assholes. They don’t always pay bills, buy $100 T-shirts, own crappy vehicles, and seem to conduct business with people who don’t verify email either.

Even once got into an argument with an idiot persistently claiming he owned “firstlast.com” (as I replied to a thread using such from my email server. I’ve owned the domain for 20+ years). He was a certifiable idiot, also by trade…

I also get a lot of “mcafee subscription” PayPal scam mails. Also have seen a lot of spam real subscription accounts created using the same email but with wildly different names. Suspect it is fraudsters testing credit cards.

The sheer number of big name companies that don’t validate emails surprises me…

If they're giving their e-mail address to other people, it's possible that those other people are hearing "lest" and respelling it as "last". So it's not the person that shares a name with you that's stupid, but the people they deal with.

Had similar thought, could be part of it, but I also get online service emails too.

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