I have an extremely common (for German-speaking countries) first-last name combination and I have [email protected] (not used anymore, but I check it around once a week). I get so many confidential documents or personal photos.

The most hilarious/sad was the insurance provider domcura which advertised how they got some kind of award for their great processes, yet writing to 2 or 3 different service emails that they are sending me confidential documents resulted in nothing until I wrote to their data protection officer.

Hello Hans Maier!

Maier is only #34 in Germany, Meyer is #6, and mine, Wagner, is at #7 ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_common_surnam...

Here in the United States we choose “John Smith” as the most generic and common name for a man. What name would a German pick?

Curiously, for a supposedly common name I have never once met a John Smith.

It depends, probably Max Müller or Hans Müller, just anything Müller. Unlike the US, we don’t normally use a real name as placeholder name [0], the options there would be Max or Erika Mustermann (literally example or pattern man), for an average person it’s Otto Normalverbraucher (Otto Average-Consumer) and Lieschen Müller.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placeholder_name

Holy shit. I never made the connection with Otto Normalverbraucher. Thanks for making me click with this little piece of German trivia on the day German history was made! :)

I thought it was John/Jane Doe but I now realize that those are only for unidentified people (in police/judiciary contexts).

In Italy - for the record - it would probably be Mario Rossi (as an example on a mockup form), but conversionally it would be Pinco Pallino.

There are a few dedicated English wikipedia pages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placeholder_name

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terms_referring_to_an_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_placeholder_names_by_l...

it is interesting to see the slighty different use in the various languages.

There was a John Smith who was briefly the leader of the Labour Party in the UK (he sadly died very soon after becoming leader from a heart attack), and I remember him saying that before he became well-known, when he checked into hotels with his real name the receptionist's often eyed him suspiciously, thinking it was a false name to cover up the fact he was checking in with his mistress.

Peter Müller (i.e. Peter Miller) would be a good generic one.

I had that happen once.

It was a recipt for a medical purchase, at first I thought I was getting scammed. What tipped me off was the email was sent to [email protected] and NOT [email protected]. That was the day I realized google would even do that.

I ended up using the phone number in the email to contact the person and forwarded the email. And yes, they had my first and last name :)

Yup! I ended up having to look him up via the states bar association's website. Was able to get his bar association email which was different then the gmail. It's the only contact I have in google contacts because it happens about 3 times a year.

He got a congratulations email on a bmw purchase one time. Had a good discussion about cars, we are both gear heads.

I'm subscribed to so many informal church groups in Alabama originally but "I've" since moved to Texas. I tried quite hard to clear up the confusion but with virtually no action ever taken, so now I just observe.

From those emails, it's nice seeing how people support each other and apparently I'm in demand giving scripture classes.

I'm french.

But my e-mail address has been used by real people to subscribe to services in Sweeden, Turkey and somewhere South America. At least language helps to sort things.

> What tipped me off was the email was sent to [email protected] and NOT [email protected].

Dots don't matter in Gmail, so these email addresses are the same:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en

Your gmail is actually firstlastname periods are ignored and so are most things after a +. So your email could be fir.st.las.t+hackernewsapp @

This reminds me of gail.com: https://discu.eu/q/https://gail.com

I used to have a similar-enough email to a dentist office in Texas and would get a lot of patient scans / files as well. Reached out a dozen times before it finally stopped.

So far I haven't gotten anything that would give me moral compunctions to ignore, thankfully!