I read stupid people's emails - the joy of a sensible gmail address

Forums › Off topic › I read stupid people's emails - the joy of a sensible gmail address

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3 posts

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#2969458 17-Sep-2022 16:32

freitasm:

@ThePharaoh:

heh, theres a guy in the UK with the same name as me, my email is john.doe@gmail.com and his is johndoe@gmail.com.

Your email is both john.doe@gmail.com and johndoe@gmail.com

Gmail ignores "." in any email address.

Ahh right. So, I wonder what his email address is then 😕

allan

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#2969459 17-Sep-2022 16:55

And today I got an invoice from a US company for an IT service call. Same first & last name, but not me...

freitasm

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#3014208 27-Dec-2022 10:49

Email last night, from a US-based store: "You are now logged into our app".

So I visited the website, clicked the "Lost password", which works in a sensible way: it sends me a code to make sure I own the email to reset the password (why don't they validate the email on registration anyway?)

I change the password to something absurdly long - and just below it I see "Logout all sessions from apps and website".

Clicked that.

Good luck getting back into "your" account, stupid.

neb

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#3014298 27-Dec-2022 13:52

Linux: Do you have a dot aka . in your Gmail address?

123.456@Gmail.com example . between 3 and 4 this is ignored by GmailLinux

This is as per the SMTP standard:

Subaddressing is the practice of augmenting the local-part of an

[RFC2822] address with some 'detail' information in order to give

some extra meaning to that address. One common way of encoding

'detail' information into the local-part is to add a 'separator

character sequence', such as "+", to form a boundary between the

'user' (original local-part) and 'detail' sub-parts of the address,

much like the "@" character forms the boundary between the local-part

and domain.

It's great that Gmail supports it since you can use it for spam control, subscribe to a new site xyz with email address abc using abc+xyz@gmail.com and you can see (a) who's selling your email address to spammers and (b) filter for spammers.

neb

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#3014300 27-Dec-2022 14:01

Handsomedan:
I'm sure I could google it, but...what's a Quarter Horse?

It's like a quarter chicken but you need to either invite friends along or bring a really big doggie bag.

Kyanar

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#3014301 27-Dec-2022 14:24

neb:

This is as per the SMTP standard:
Subaddressing is the practice of augmenting the local-part of an [RFC2822] address with some 'detail' information in order to give some extra meaning to that address. One common way of encoding 'detail' information into the local-part is to add a 'separator character sequence', such as "+", to form a boundary between the 'user' (original local-part) and 'detail' sub-parts of the address, much like the "@" character forms the boundary between the local-part and domain.

It's great that Gmail supports it since you can use it for spam control, subscribe to a new site xyz with email address abc using abc+xyz@gmail.com and you can see (a) who's selling your email address to spammers and (b) filter for spammers.

Worth noting that this trick with "." does not work on Google Workspace, where the "." forms part of the local-part. (E.g. john.doe@example.com is not the same as johndoe@example.com)

Bung

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#3014313 27-Dec-2022 15:20

neb:
It's great that Gmail supports it since you can use it for spam control, subscribe to a new site xyz with email address abc using abc+xyz@gmail.com and you can see (a) who's selling your email address to spammers and (b) filter for spammers.

Does this work? Wouldn't the spammer just strip out the +xyz and use abc@gmail as the target?

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neb

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#3014314 27-Dec-2022 15:22

Bung: Does this work? Wouldn't the spammer just strip out the +xyz and use abc@gmail as the target?

That assumes spammers are going to invest a lot of effort into faffing around with email addresses, which is pretty much the exact opposite of a successful spammer business model.

Behodar

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#3014316 27-Dec-2022 15:29

Yeah, it assumes that spammers have brain cells. I moderate on another forum and one of the standard spammer thought processes seems to be "right, this spam I've posted every day for the past year, that's been caught by the filter every single time I've posted it... I'll just post it again".

richms

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#3014324 27-Dec-2022 16:06

Bung:
neb:
It's great that Gmail supports it since you can use it for spam control, subscribe to a new site xyz with email address abc using abc+xyz@gmail.com and you can see (a) who's selling your email address to spammers and (b) filter for spammers.

Does this work? Wouldn't the spammer just strip out the +xyz and use abc@gmail as the target?

Smart ones do, yes. But many times you will see the email come thru without it being stripped and therefore know which company leaked your details out.

Richard rich.ms

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#3014328 27-Dec-2022 16:16

freitasm:

Email last night, from a US-based store: "You are now logged into our app".

So I visited the website, clicked the "Lost password", which works in a sensible way: it sends me a code to make sure I own the email to reset the password (why don't they validate the email on registration anyway?)

I change the password to something absurdly long - and just below it I see "Logout all sessions from apps and website".

Clicked that.

Good luck getting back into "your" account, stupid.

What does the "B" in "BDFL" stand for again? 🤣

Delete cookies?! Are you insane?!

rugrat

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#3014396 27-Dec-2022 18:06

I haven’t read this thread but main things for me are:

Someone used my email address for Instagram. They had had it for two years, with their photo’s on it.

When I went to sign up email was in use, so I reset password. Email address showed as unverified, so they allowed an unverified email address to have an account for two years.

Person has somehow managed to get their photo’s removed which I’m fine with.

Second one was went to set up Twitter account, same unverified email address and it was a banned account.

I set up a new account using an Apple relay address that points to my email address want to use, that seems to have worked and got around twitters ban, I only read from there so far any way.

Don’t believe unverified emails should be able to have long term accounts.

sir1963

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#3014421 27-Dec-2022 19:11

kryptonjohn:

I've fortunately not been subjected to this.

However I do end up with a large number of corporate email addresses as almost every customer project site I've been at gives me an email address. Some of these are corporations with tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of staff, so there's generally quite a few with my name and I end up getting lots of emails to the wrong me.

Seen some pretty juicy stuff too. Or I would have if I read them but naturally I would *never* do that! ;-)

Yeah, I got a "corporate" email accidentally one day within work.

This one started with "We strongly advise you to consult with your own lawyer"

Opened the attached PDF and saw it was definitely NOT for me, but I knew the person who sent it, so contacted her and said....um, you may want to check the email address for this one....there was lots of Oh F, Oh F....on the end of the phone in a very shrill voice. I pointed out that I did NOT read the PDF and everything had been deleted.

Got Xmas chocolates that year from a very relieved senior EA.

sir1963

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#3014425 27-Dec-2022 19:27

richms:

Smart ones do, yes. But many times you will see the email come thru without it being stripped and therefore know which company leaked your details out.

After being added to a hotels spam list (took me 2 years to get off it), I set up another gmail address I now use for these occasions.

kjwspamtrap@gmail.com

I get told by people I can not use it as it is not a valid email address , I tell them it is, and I own it, but I am glad they recognise its use. All they require is a valid email address, they do not require one that I have to read their BS on. I log in every 3 months or so and just delete everything. Anything "important" such as address verification I can still do, and then still ignore afterwards.

I used it to sign up to a few things, if I don't get spammed from "Trusted 3rd parties" then eventually I will change my email address to a less throw away one.

If I do get spammed then my hosts file ends up adding the spammed domains as "0.0.0.0 spammedDomain.com" or what ever is appropriate

I also send it off to someonewhocares.org who maintains a very good hosts file list.

alasta

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#3014433 27-Dec-2022 20:31

I have three options which I find to be quite effective:

My main personal address which sends everything to my inbox. I use this for people and businesses who have a legitimate need to contact me personally, and who I trust. I have a zero tolerance approach to nuisance emails on this address.
The 'Hide my Email' feature which creates a temporary address that forwards to my inbox. I use this for situations where there may be a legitimate need to contact me, but I don't entirely trust the other party. Examples would be event tickets or accomodation bookings.
My 'low priority' address which sends everything to a quarantine folder which I check periodically. I would use this when I don't trust the other party and don't believe they should need to contact me - e.g. surveys or competitions.

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