Gmail security issue reveals I share my name with a female bodybuilder

This is kind of worrying. My email address is amanda.name@gmail.com, but I’ve received an email for amandaname@gmail.com (no dot). And this is the second time it’s happened.

On the other hand, it’s interesting to know that I share my name with an attractive female bodybuilder.

8 thoughts on “Gmail security issue reveals I share my name with a female bodybuilder”

  1. lisa says:

    That happens to me too…If you have name.name, no one else can have namename. I share my name with someone who organises church fetes. Who has a nephew who loves to send sweet messages to his tannie.

  2. Nicola says:

    The same thing happens to me often with the googlemail equivalent of my gmail address. Apparently that version of me sings in the church choir and has soccer playing munchkins. O_o

  3. SheBee says:

    What’s really strange is that when I signed up for my fake US iTunes account, I used sheena.gates@gmail.com specifically so that all relevant emails would still come through to me. This is a known issue with gmail.

    My email-doppelganger is a part of an American skollie-patrollie PTA group. You must KNOW how awesome those chain mails are…

  4. SheBee says:

    PS: Totally glad you’re still alive to blog about these random things, by the way. Got chills when I read your previous post last week.

  5. amanda says:

    Thanks Sheena. Me too!

  6. Syllable says:

    Just yesterday I got a mail from someone (with my gran’s name and surname!) with old pics of some kids, telling me I look the same as I did when I was a child. Gran is in a home with no computer access (and she has no PC literacy herself), so it kind of freaked me out. It’s also not like I have an e-mail address you can easily mistake for another.

  7. Theresa says:

    My name.name and my namename gmail accounts both arrive in my inbox, even though I never signed up for the latter? Strange!

  8. It is actually a “feature” of google and a lot of other mail services. The server ignores any .’s in the address so simon@… is the same as s.i.m.o.n@

    Another useful trick with gmail is the +. Let’s say u are signing up to a website. You are worried that they might sell your email address but if they did how would you know? Like this:

    amanda.name@gmail.com could also be amanda.name+NAMEOFCOMPANY@gmail.com

    Gmail will accept mail for you with +anything added to the end of the bit before the @

    Try it out. Very useful when a company “shares” your email addy.

    Cheers
    Simon

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