People who don't know their own email addresses

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freitasm

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#196125 20-May-2016 09:58

I sometimes get emails from companies contacting me about services I haven't subscribed to. Some people can't even spell their own names when entering {something}@gmail.com...

Today I got two emails: one from Honda USA about my new car and another from Sirius XM about my sat radio in the car. I now have full control of both. I wonder if I could just stop this car going anywhere...

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#1556000 20-May-2016 10:03

Probably set up by a dealer or something, rather than the customer themselves. Car dealers are not known for their computer skills.

Richard rich.ms

freitasm

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#1556002 20-May-2016 10:04

Some people don't know that a "." inside a Gmail address is nothing really. I had fun closing some accounts before and changing passwords in others.

richms

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#1556004 20-May-2016 10:07

Yes, Also amazing the number of people that think that + is not valid in an email address. Last I checked there was no restrictions on the left part other than the obvious of an @ symbol, but places put their own made up rules on valid email addresses when you sign up for them. Cant use poo emoji@my domain name for places.

Richard rich.ms

littlehead

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#1556006 20-May-2016 10:10

This always surprises me. I am the contact for a number of accounts I didn't start/create including separate Instagram, Facebook and Amazon accounts for different people, two separate high school/school district mailing lists in different US states, and a shopping account for a department store in Houston.

They all seem legit but I never reply back, use them or "forget my password" in case of some elaborate scam I am unaware of, so they all just get auto deleted.

richms

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#1556009 20-May-2016 10:11

I make sure to activate all the accounts I can and take them over. Doesnt happen too often with my gmail, but I used to have heaps on my ihug address back when people were still using ISP emails.

Richard rich.ms

timmmay

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#1556016 20-May-2016 10:17

Did you know an apostrophe is valid in an email address? Most servers don't support it. It caused us significant grief when a user with a apostrophe in their email address signed up to one of our services - a new release of the core platform by the vendor and of our application. We couldn't even test it because no service we could find supported it.

Lias

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#1556031 20-May-2016 10:30

timmmay:

Did you know an apostrophe is valid in an email address?

As are virtually all special characters

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wasabi2k

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#1556036 20-May-2016 10:34

There is supported in the RFC and supported by the mail server. Then supported by the badly written email verification regex...

MikeB4

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#1556037 20-May-2016 10:34

I often forget my trash email address, heck I even forget my own phone numbers sometimes as I never ring them:P

I get amused though when I get a replay to an email and the person who sent me the reply asks for my email address.

sidefx

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#1556049 20-May-2016 10:40

I have a relatively short and I guess "common" gmail address and am always amazed at the amount of random emails I get from people who don't know their own email (or make mistakes entering someone else) - recently I've got a huge range including confirmations of my car being booked in for servicing at some US car dealership, confirmations of my bookings for hotel rooms in the UK, confirmations of my upcoming visit to inspect a factory in thailand, some sort of industrial "recipe" for cornstarch or something in China, login details to track my childs progress in some school district IT system in the US, details of camp sites I had booking Romania, etc, etc. And they all appear to be intended for different people, so it's not like it's just one person who keeps entering the wrong email. I guess it's inevitable with the sheer number of people who use gmail.

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#1556055 20-May-2016 10:42

wasabi2k: There is supported in the RFC and supported by the mail server. Then supported by the badly written email verification regex...

I looked at several regex examples and all of them rejected the perfectly valid 私@mydomain.net.

richms: Probably set up by a dealer or something, rather than the customer themselves. Car dealers are not known for their computer skills.

It's frustrating when third parties decide to "edit" your email address. My family owns mydomain.net (obviously not the actual name!) and I'd tell people that my address was myname@mydomain.net. I had a few messages forwarded on from the owner of mydomain.net.nz, since people would arbitraily decide that I'd given them the wrong address and then suffix .nz onto it!

radomatic

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#1556454 20-May-2016 17:52

Behodar:

It's frustrating when third parties decide to "edit" your email address. My family owns mydomain.net (obviously not the actual name!) and I'd tell people that my address was myname@mydomain.net. I had a few messages forwarded on from the owner of mydomain.net.nz, since people would arbitraily decide that I'd given them the wrong address and then suffix .nz onto it!

Personally quite annoyed with people who refuse to accept you have a personal domain. My email is firstname@lastname.com and I always get people saying "so that's @gmail.com?" or similar.

josephhinvest

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#1556458 20-May-2016 18:06

I bought a very clever and expensive domain that is just my surname with a dot in it. Have had trouble giving that email address lots of times, usually just give my firstnamelastname@gmail.com address to third parties. :)

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Joseph

Behodar

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#1556464 20-May-2016 18:25

I know someone named Kay, and her email address is k@isp.net.nz (the joy of being an early adopter!)

I'm sure you can see whether this is going... it became a transcription nightmare, especially over the phone!

hio77

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#1556469 20-May-2016 18:29

i find giving my personal email across, find people often stumble when your not handing them a .gmail etc as its unexpected..

I do love how clean it looks though, well worth the cost.

Most third party services i give my more public 'online' email, let all the spam and crap hit there any whenever my actual inbox lights up.. its probably important. - I need to get around to disabling ever so helpful Google apps information emails though..

Different symbols for different services is interesting too, personally i make a fair bit of use out of using + for filtering or to appear as different emails.

Often ill give each service its own unique tag, helpful for any time any details are leaked.. know exactly who to point fingers at and say your database is exposed.

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