Gmail Labs: Got the wrong Bob?

I bet that bank just let out a 'touché'

Darn, I thought this was something to deal with people sending you stuff that was addressed to somebody else they know with the same name and nearly the same email address. I'm not talking about people who have me in their address book, just random people who fat-finger an email address.

Thank god. Having a fairly common first and last name, I actually do get an email or two a month addressed to the wrong person. And it's usually addressed to a lot of people.

Although I did kinda enjoy it from a voyeuristic perspective, you'd be surprised what kinds of stuff people email to many of their close friends.

I recently mailed short set of logins and passwords to my old customer instead of my current customer. Source of my mistake was that these two people shared both first and last name. Fortunately I felt uneasy and double checked to whom actually I sent the email, and after noticing mistake I promptly changed passwords and sent them to the right guy this time.

My strategy is to do my bitching and backstabbing via IM and use e-mail for legitimate work.

Wouldn't it make more sense to not autosuggest certain names in the first place in that AJAX drop-down? This kinda feels like they're building a feature to defend against another feature. Perhaps these guys need something else to do?