Dealing with someone else’s typos.
For the record, this happens to me constantly. I regularly get emails that were clearly (clearly!) intended for someone else, likely with a similar email address to mine.
I have theories about why this happens to most folks, and additional theories about why my situation might be special.
I’ll share how I deal with this situation.
Email for someone else
You’re probably getting someone else’s email because they mistyped their address, avoided giving their real one, or someone is just being a troublemaker. It happens. Your best move is to delete it and move on. You’re not responsible, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it anyway.
Reason #1: typos
The single biggest reason you and I get emails for accounts that aren’t ours is that the actual account holder (or whoever else is setting up the account) entered our email address by mistake.
For example, if someone is attempting to enter “john@example.com”, but types “johan@example.com” by mistake, then if you’re Johan, you’ll be getting those emails.
As I said, I get this all the time. My two Gmail accounts have six-letter email names, and people often typo their own email address, so I get the result. For example, apparently “I” recently bought auto parts in Florida and got signed up to the store’s mailing list.
I’m honestly shocked at how often people type their own email addresses incorrectly. This is why so many services have you type in your email address twice.
Particularly if you have a short email address, or your email address has a common structure or name, it happens often.
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Reason #2: avoidance
I theorize this scenario happens when a young person is creating an online account requiring an email address. They don’t have an email address, they don’t want an email address, and they don’t want to take the time to create one. So they enter one at random just to satisfy the sign-up process. I routinely get signed up for Roblox accounts, for example.
If the one they enter at random happens to be yours, you’ll get whatever notices are sent to it.
I think this happens most often to those who have “simple” email addresses, like firstname@popularservice.com.
Reason #3: mischief
This is where I’m “special”. Because I have a few publicly posted email addresses, I find that individuals like to sign me up for things or even set my email address as their recovery address.
Interestingly, I’ve also seen individuals — again, most likely kids — try to sign themselves up for some online service using one of my email addresses. I’m not sure what they expect. I do know that when they lose their password and try to recover their account, it’s not going to work, because I won’t act on the confirmation emails sent to me.
What to do about it
The first approach is simple: ignore it. Delete the emails relating to the misuse of your address, and get on with your life. No harm will come to you for ignoring email messages you’re not responsible for.
The second is to act on it somehow. This can be risky. If you’re certain that a message is legit, you might reply and inform the sender of the error, but that’s a risk if it’s spam. If you’re certain it’s a legitimate newsletter, then maybe unsubscribe, but that’s risky too.
You can mark them as spam if you like. I tend not to unless they get annoying or are from sources I honestly consider to be spammers. Don’t mark any notices from services you actually use as spam; you want to receive legitimate emails you need in the future.
If the actual account holder has difficulty regaining access to their account, that’s on them for not properly specifying an email address in their control when they set up the account.
Occasionally, email messages include a link along the lines of “Not your account?” or similar. Clicking on that link will disassociate your email address from whatever account it was mistakenly associated with. Hopefully, it’ll also tell the account holder of their mistake.
Do this
There’s nothing to prevent someone from entering your email address or mine into a form for account recovery, newsletter subscriptions, product orders, or anything else. There’s no liability on our part; it’s just an annoyance.
This is why most services and email subscriptions have you confirm your email address before they accept it as valid. Ignore those you didn’t ask for, and you shouldn’t be bothered again. Unfortunately, not all services take this extra confirmation step. Nonetheless, there’s nothing you can do about it other than ignore, delete, or spam the messages that result.
And, for the record, I would not change my email address over this. Deleting the emails is easy. Switching to a new email address is not.
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I have a first.last@gmail.com address. Got it back in the days when you had to ask for an invitation to try this new thing called Gmail.
My last name is not likely to be entered by typo or someone choosing a random last name. However, it is common enough (at least in states with a significant German heritage, that I have found that it was shared by another in two small cities I lived in and there are more than three others in the Minneapolis area.
Never had a collision on the email (I actually use my own domain but it is funneled through gmail for the spam removal) until about two years ago.
After visiting my wife’s parents (live in a small city), I got an email from a boat dealer in THAT CITY about a boat I had been looking at. I did contact them and they explained that a jeweler from Madison (matching name) had been looking at the boat and would phone him. He ended up with first.last###@gmail.com and a few people seem to forget to add them at the end. I did contact him and let him know that some people were not getting his address right. I think that he may be reminding them to include the digits or has started using a different address. I have let him know of a few important looking items (like someone trying to confirm an order with him) but the number has dropped drastically.
” you might reply and inform the sender of the error,”
Would this be possible? Wouldn’t your address and the address of the service be the only addresses on the email?
I think you missed one possible reason for misdirected emails: poor data mining.
I frequently get emails addressed to my relatives at my email address. Mine is the only one of our email addresses that contains our last name, but the emails usually say something like, “Dear Firstname”. They are usually for political or charity fund raisers.
I also get phone calls and snail mail with similar mistakes.
Another faint possibility is social engineering, not unlike similar stuff with social engineering texts where you get a random text saying something like, “Hi Johan, what did you think about the movie last night?”
A closely related issue is (legitimately) getting text messages for someone else.
While I get plenty of phishing and junk texts, I also periodically get a whole series of flight status notifications, including gate change notices, from SW Airlines.
Based on the flights origins and destinations it seems likely that someone with the same area code as me (where I used to live) has fat fingered in the wrong number for text notifications. I bet it has some transposed digits. I’m surprised they don’t do a confirmation text before including a number in their system but they must not.
At one point, after dozens of these, I foolishly wasted time trying to inform SW Airlines that someone who was not me had my phone number in there for notifications and maybe wondered why they weren’t getting them. No one who cared was reachable. Not a surprise!
Replying with STOP killed further notices in a given string of notices but they would come back for new flights later.
I regularly get emails sent to {removed}@domain.com
They’re actually intended for {removed}@domain.com.AU, a company in Australia.
I’ve added a quickpart reply to Outlook so that when some hapless vendor has gotten the wrong address from friend Leroy (or has made the same mistake themselves), I can set them back on The One True Path To {removed} with a few keystrokes.
I don’t know why I bother, really. In all the time I’ve been doing this, I’ve never received so much as a “Thanks, mate!” from any of these people. Or even from Leroy when I wrote to let HIM know of the problem.
Hmm. Ya know what? From now on, the DEL key is good enough for these rude b**tards.
My take is that they’re not rude at all, but rather simply never see your replies. Agree the DEL is the most effective approach.
When I consistently get email from an address that I don’t want to receive email from, I set up a filter to send those emails to the Deleted folder, not mark as spam because I don’t want to report the sender as a spammer.
I’m frankly astonished, Leo, that you seem to rank the possibility of Spam last.
I would rank it first!
I assume that any unsolicited or erroneously sent order confirmation or invoice is always a low-grade phishing attempt to confirm that my E-Mail address is valid.
If you send anything back to them — anything at all — correction, complaint, inquiry — you’ve just verified to the sender (spammer) that your E-Mail address is valid.
This article discusses steps to take if you ger email addressed to you which is meant for someone else. Spam and phishing are different issues.
This happens to me all the time too! Like commenter Bill, I have a first.last@gmail address that I’ve had since 2004 when Gmail was still in beta. And my name is NOT uncommon. I get all kinds of newsletters, flight itineraries, shipping notifications, etc. for people who apparently don’t know how to spell their own email address. The latest development in the last few years has been the introduction of autodeposit for email money transfers. I registered for it immediately because I hate the awkward little passwords for e-transfers. Now, I have strangers sending money right to my bank account! Much to their surprise, email money transfers are *irreversible* if the recipient has autodeposit. The payment clears the sender’s account and hits mine as soon as they tap “confirm” on their misspelled payment. The only option they have is to actually email me to beg me to send it back! I have been generous enough to do so when they ask nicely. The hardest one was the woman who sent me almost $3,000 for a week-long cottage rental. I sent it back, because I’m nice. For the next TWO YEARS in a row she emailed me again to confirm her rental dates and I had to write her back to stop her from sending me money again. Some people :’)