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Gettting someone elses email (gmail)
Gilbert0
North of SeattleRegistered User regular
North of SeattleRegistered User regular
I was an early adopter to gmail and have owned my email address firstname.lastname@gmail.com for years. Recently, I've been getting more email that's not spam but clearly subscriptions to things someone has signed-up for. They're using the firstnamelastname@gmail.com (because google ignores periods).
I was just ignoring it and opting out of the distribution lists but now it's starting to be their Virgin media account and I'm starting to get account numbers and install dates for TV/Internet in London, UK. Problem is, I live in Vancouver, Canada.
I've been opting out of these emails when I can, but really the fix is to let the person know, stop signing up for services with the wrong email account. Is there anything I can do?
I was just ignoring it and opting out of the distribution lists but now it's starting to be their Virgin media account and I'm starting to get account numbers and install dates for TV/Internet in London, UK. Problem is, I live in Vancouver, Canada.
I've been opting out of these emails when I can, but really the fix is to let the person know, stop signing up for services with the wrong email account. Is there anything I can do?
0
Posts
I guess you could try telling the folk sending the emails to stop it, though they likely won't.
What email myself? That's not exactly helpful.
I've already emailed Virgin (because I'm not waiting on hold with Internation LD to call them) to fix it. But I'd rather have the guy to stop signing up for stuff.
"No, I assure you, I am not a sorority sister from Eastern Michigan."
Aside from emailing the individual companies and explaining? I don't think there's much you can do. You're basically the victim of the old 'sign up my buddy for spam' prank.
Which is what I was afraid of. The problem now is that it's not music or restaurant deals of the week, it's his home TV/Internet. I have enough account information that if I wanted to, I could register as him and cancel all the services. Or triple his cost.
There's really not a lot you can do other than keep opting out for the spam and letting the company know if it's for registration for a pay service.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
but they're listening to every word I say
It sounds like this is from an actual person though, who is just unaware (I'd assume? Account information and whatnot is pretty sensitive stuff)...that's certainly true for actual spam, though.
If it was spam, yes. But I have an account number, refernce code, home address, appointment time for his TV/Internet install. If this is spam, this is the best spam ever.
I typically don't click the unsubscribe link, I'll go to the actual business website and unsubscribe from there.
I guess this is really "dumb people being dumb" for not knowing your own email address.
It might cost you a few bucks, but that would be a pretty splendid and upstanding thing to do.
Steam Me
You have a pen? Paper? Perhaps an envelope? Splurge on a stamp?
My experience has been mostly positive with that. I even had a client who paid the wrong laura wilson on paypal, and she was kind enough to return it. Occasionally you will just hit a person who doesn't understand the internet (the "what do you mean? I used my name it should come to me?") but the dude may actually be miss remembering an old account and deflecting it to a real person by mistake.
so what you can do is use this fact to setup multiple rules to filter mail based upon where a . appears in your email address.
so make a filter rule to send all mail that is sent to firstnamelastname to the spam folder.
and then to go even further, you can do this yourself, like when I signup for some websites that I know send out newsletters or other junk I don't want, I stick a "." in a specific spot in my email, so that for example all mail to first.namelastname go to one folder, while mail to firstname.lastname to another, and firstnamelast.name to a third and so on.
"But do go on."
If you can't (easily) get any other contact info like that, then just unsubscribe or ignore the emails.
For actual SPAM (i.e. 'buy this viagra from me!'), this is probably not a bad idea; for spam that's from reasonably legitimate companies, though, I've found that most actually do unsubscribe you from email lists.
I've had the same problem with someone sending personal emails thinking I'm their brother... I think it took 5 or 6 replies before they've stopped (though every now and then they'll start again)
It's crazy, but there isn't anything you can really do about it.