firstname.lastname (at) gmail and firstnamelastname (at) gmail
are the same address.
People also get very confused about + in addresses.
Literally the only time I've gotten something that was for another person is when someone else with my exact name purchased something medical and they emailed the receipt to "[email protected]". It turns out that if gmail receives an email in that format and all they find is "[email protected]", they'll go ahead and stuff it into that inbox.
I was able to track the person down, call them, explain what happened, forward the email to them, and delete it.
My name isn't super uncommon, but for whatever reason I don't get those sorts of emails.
One of my Gmail addresses is <my first name>@gmail.com and I never get interesting titbits intended for other people.
Mind you, it probably helps that my first name and surname are pretty unusual. I've also got <my first name>@yandex.com, <my surname>@yandex.com, plus the <my first name>.net and <my surname>.net domain names. So I've pretty much cornered the market in being uniquely identifiable online, for anyone who knows me.
Hmmm... maybe I should se if <my surname>@gmail.com is available, just to really tie up the loose ends!
UPDATE: Hmmm... <my surname>@gmail.com has already been taken, so I can't complete the set. Chances are I actually set it up myself a long while back and then never bothered to use it, but I'm buggered if I can remember the password.
To get a good email address these days you either have to be very early at jumping on a new email service or you have to be skilled enough to use your own domain.
Not a very sensible idea, given how many sites have "What year where you born?" as one of their security questions.
Anecdata from me: I've never seen this as a security question,
I'm willing to concede that I didn't notice it because I just pick a security question at random and record it in my password database with a made up answer so that I can satisfy their test later on without using a real, guessable answer.
I've mentioned before on here; it did come back to bite me once when I had to ring my insurance company and confirm that my mother's maiden name was... er... "Hitler"!
A couple of years back, a friend was doing some recruiting. One of the applicants had the email address [email protected].
(Translated, it was in another language.)
On the other hand, it appears my name is unique in the world. The only things I've ever found under my name that weren't written by me appear to be people scraping for content and trashing the format--I've found plenty of examples of words attributed to me that were really quotes.
I occasionally try to remedy the issues, but I have yet to convince my mother to fix the email on her bank account.
Back then, I never considered this address an "OG" address, but then around 2012 I noticed something funny. I volunteered to do some charity work and everyone was asked to sign in to a log book and write down their email address with a pen. Several people who worked for this charity said to me "How did you get that email address?" and seemed to think it was unusual that I had a Gmail address that was simply my last name. When I asked them what their email address was, they'd say something like "[email protected]" or something like that. Hard to believe people use those kinds of addresses for official business and applying for jobs, but they do.
My name is also very English. So when I get missent email, almost everybody using my address is from the UK, Canada, Australia, or NZ.