I use my lastname [at] gmail (same as my HN username). Over the years, I’ve received all sorts of misdirected messages: medical, financial, support, even real estate documents. When it seems important, I do my best to contact the sender and let them know.

What I’ve learned is that “no-reply” email addresses can cause real harm in situations where it’s critical to reach an actual person.

My dad's first name is my last name so my last name @gmail is taken by him :)

But I have a relatively rare first name and even rarer last name due to my dad having a very rare first name, so I easily snagged first.last. Pretty sure to this day I've never even seen anyone with my dad's first name (or my last name).

Meanwhile, my coworkers name is literally Adam Smith and his usernames tend to be adamsmith2 or 3 or 4.

I once worked at a place that has two Brian Smiths who worked at desks across from each other. That was quite bizarre.

One place I worked, we had one guy with the same personal and family names of the (then) Director General of the BBC… working on a project with another guy who also shared both.

I am not the horror film director I share a name with.

I've worked in a few groups over the years with several other "Michael"... It's not fun when you get 4 in a group (dev/mgt teams) of like 15.

I have [email protected] because first.last was already taken.

Just curious, do gmail accounts ever expire? Will I ever get the chance to snag the other one? Or does it forever belong to my nemesis and life-long enemy?

After two years of inactivity:

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/12418290?hl=en

This answer is not actually correct. I have an account I deleted 18 years ago, still can’t make it again.

Could in theory be because someone else grabbed the account 16 years ago tho, unless I'm missing something?

No Google does not allow creating a new account with a previously-used Gmail address. Each Gmail address can be used at most once.

I emailed the address to make sure: It bounce due to not existing.

Unused they have a half-life. Google Voice numbers much more aggressively so.

It's somewhere in the document.

Even if your google account is deleted, the email address is NOT recycled because it can be used to impersonate people - maybe the previous owner still has physical/digital accounts linked to that old email. As far as I know most services do this - an email address once registered is never released again.

You can never make another account with that address because Google does not delete things.

Same boat. Obscure last name humans unite!

> Over the years, I’ve received all sorts of misdirected messages […]

Looking at my text messages, surely these are a mix of serious business and the starts of scams. How unsavory to think that helping someone could be a bad thing.

One of my gmail doppelgängers has started trading crypto and I am deeply concerned for them.

I think mine is worse off. He keeps being signed up for Facebook notifications on whatever activity he's doing.

I get a ton of email to my gmail address for other people with similar names.

One of them was a director at Google, but I think she retired. Always assumed that meant I'd get a lame work email if I applied there.

Absolutely... I've had the same issue (nickname is gmail name), and constantly amazed how many people don't "get" that you can't just claim any gmail address you like and start using it on websites anyway.

I've gotten student financial aid docs, various product mailing lists, order receipts etc... it's amazing how many places take an email address and just start spamming without any validation at all.

I have met someone with my last name, if its not hyphenated, which mine is. My name is as unique as it gets with hyphenating. I never use my hyphenated name anywhere other than 100% legal stuff.

I have a sufficiently uncommon last name to be able to figure out which branch of the family the misdirected emails are meant for. Was quite nice getting updates from the chip shop we used to get fish and chips from when we went to visit grandma, intended for someone who afaik I never met.

Yea I own [email protected] for my name too and I get emails for who I think is the same person fairly often. Like job stuff, professional education emails, etc. I used to reply to them saying wrong person but have given up...the guy must not care about not getting these emails...

My first name is very uncommon and my last name is very common.

I own [email protected] and luckily I don't get any misdirected mail there.

Same, albeit it seems like multiple people. Or at least someone who moves states.

It's bizarre though... who puts down an email address they don't own on a job application?!

I recently wanted to introduce someone to our internal recruiters to a person with a long, uniqueish name. The recruiter was like: they did respond with „I’m not interested“. But the person was like: I’ve never got a mail.

Turned out the whatever tool our recruiter used spit out „[email protected]“ even though the person in question doesn’t own that email.

Interesting!

I've gotten a wide enough variety of stuff (mortgage paperwork, homeowners insurance, game service accounts) that some of it has to be organically entered, but that is a good note. Crazy that any system would be set up that way, but HR tech is a clusterfuck.

I am [email protected], but I wouldn't be surprised if something similar is happening in some instances.

I am on the other side of this problem and was surprised because it is very easy to contact me. When the other person with my name forwarded the emails, it was all careless and unwanted recruiter mail. Someone goes into work, types first.last@gmail, and hits send without doing one Google search. Incredible.

I'm in the same boat, except my first and last name are fairly common. My gmail account is not my primary email address, and to be honest I don't know if I could manage making it my primary because of the amount of rubbish I get.

My address is the same. Someone with my name thinks their email address is [email protected]

Its annoying especially since we have the same bank and they are not very good at paying their credit card on time. I therefore get their bank emails. Initially It will always have me confused as weight wait. I don't have any balance on my credit card. Was this fraud?

I'm in exactly the same situation - very rare last name, [email protected] address, wrong mail from all over including NZ.

I have pretty rare first and last name, but somehow have gotten random person's car service receipts (and reminders) from a service place in the US (I live in NZ).

There car has a lot of problems.

I got on twitter pretty early too, and just have a short first time as my @, and occasionally get DMs about getting my @, but no one wants to hand out cash for it. The most I've been offered is $50. But most just expect me to give it for free.