I am an ardent fan of Gmail and have been using for the last 10 years. Recently I started getting emails containing invoices of things that i did not purchase. Or details of stocks that i did not hold and confirmations on transactions which I did not make!
At first, I thought, these were just mere coincidences and I ignored them. But the frequency has increased now. On a average I get about 4-5 emails a day which are addressed to my name but they contain details of things which other people have done!
My email address is firstname.lastname@gmail.com. When I looked at the email address again this time, I found that there is no "." between the first name and the last name and next to it there is a link which say "(Yes, this is you.) Learn more". When you click on the "learn more" it explains that Google ignores the "." before the @! Which means firstname.lastname@gmail.com is the same as firstnamelastname@gmail.com or fi.rst.name.last.name@gmail.com. While this is good feature if you have started Gmail service today and the only person allowed to register with a unique name is me. I am not sure if Gmail started with this service 10 years ago.
First of all it is disheartening to believe so many people exist with the same name as mine! In the first year 18 of my life, I came across only 1, who shared the same first name and now suddenly hundreds of people are getting emails of their customers incorrect and all coming to me! While it is humbling, it is annoying to read about profits that will never be mine and things which will never be delivered to me!
Being completely selfish, I don't mind sharing 5 more emails with "Trash" but I concerned if someone else is also getting my emails. Is there a comforting answer?
-Vihang
