My wife gets emails all the time meant for a particular woman in a different state with the same name as her. For some reason, this other woman consistently uses my wife’s email address. We know where and when her kids go to ballet classes, how much she pays, when she gets Botox, and how much she pays, invoices from her therapist, etc. How does she never notice that none of these emails are going to her and correct the email address she has given out?

I have the same issue with a guy in another state. I know everything he rents from Redbox and everything he buys from harbor freight.

This happened to me with someone’s bank account and they didn’t have confirmation so I kept getting emails with pii after that, including the recovery phone number, address, etc. (I alerted the bank to their issue)

I have a first initial last name email from the early days of gmail. The amount of PII and private conversations I've received is incredible. Someone on the other side of the country tried to email himself his business loan application... twice.

Hah that happened to me a few years ago too. HSBC emailed me all the login details for someone’s internet banking account. I emailed back saying they had the wrong email address for their customer. They said if I wanted to change the email address on the account I’d need to go into a branch to do it. It took several attempts back and forth before they finally just disabled internet banking again for that account.

But that was way too much effort. I don’t bother now. My Gmail address (josephg) is a cornucopia of junk. It gets the pay slips from a mechanic, lollypop orders, delivery notifications for shoes, Indian cell phone bills, and all sorts of things. I declared bankruptcy on that account years ago and moved on.

I don't guard mine, but I also don't have a normal name address. Hard to overstate how much that has been a benefit for me.