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How to find someone who mistakenly uses your email adress halfway around the world?

I had someone else use my gmail account. They told one or two other organisations that this was their email address. I wrote to these organisations saying it was wrong. Never heard back from them since. They did use Dropbox to store some photos, which I stole. Not sure what to do with them. They are mostly of poor quality of no interest except for the photographer and the subjects. This was a few years ago and they no longer use my gmail address.
 
Try emailing to your address but "@mail.com" and tell them you might be getting their mail.

I met my cousin Sylvia this way! She has the same address as mine but it is @mail and not @gmail.

I have forwarded her insurance quotes, furniture delivery appointments, invoices, social invitations...lots of things! Obviously it is her main account. For your mix-up, it may be a second or third account used just for signing up to stuff.

(Lucky for me, my Dutch surname name is pretty rare so anyone with it is on my family tree somewhere.)
 
Dr. Keith said:
My wife had an email address of Last.First but one of her friends called me to ask her email address and I said First.Last by mistake. This was used by that entire friend group on e-vite for years.
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I had something similar happen to me once. I got caught in a reply-all hell when some idiot manager mistyped his subordinate's name in her Gmail address and sent me a bunch of confidential company info. I emailed him back and pointed out that since I was in the US I had no interest in a company that provides services in New Zealand. He apologized, but said we must have the same email and there was nothing he could do about it. :mgbanghead After asking multiple times for them to stop including me in the reply-all, I finally had to block everyone he'd sent the email to.

That might be the best solution for the OP. If you're getting emails from services you never plan to use, just block 'em. Then it's not your problem anymore.
 
At one time I was one of four people in my company with the same first and last name. I shared a middle initial with one of the others and the same suffix (Jr.) with another. I was the first to start working there so I got the prime first.last email address.

I received a lot of email intended for one of the others. The worst was when I would be cc'ed in a reply. It was a battle to get the others in the conversation to stop including me in the replies.

I had a number of filters set up so that I didn't miss messages that were important to me and to help me ignore the ones I couldn't stop.
 
I happened to me quite a lot until GDPR when I reported it to the Data Protection agencies. I have three namesakes in Canada and I used to get eTickets and moderately sensitive information sent to my old Gmail for one of them, that was fixed after I emailed the PM's office and forwarded the itinerary I'd been sent. Another from Canada had details for mys loyalty scheme at some store, I had difficulty making them understand the problem.
One from the UK last year regarding delivery of furniture; that was particularly had as the link allowed me access to his account, including home address and credit card number...
 
I am last.first, but gmail thinks that it is the same as lastfirst. I get Facebook spam from overseas for someone who is not Little 10 Toes at lastfirst @ gmail. Have a filter that sends all lastfirst mail to trash.
 
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Darat said:
I had two attempts to reset my Google password last night. Google let me know that it was via a computer identified as being in Germany.

I’m assuming it’s simply someone mistyping but I’ve changed all my important passwords anyway.
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Why change your passwords? presumably you know its safe as the attempts failed and its not a brute force thingy. You might accidentally change your passwords to something easier to crack?
 
p0lka said:
Why change your passwords? presumably you know its safe as the attempts failed and its not a brute force thingy. You might accidentally change your passwords to something easier to crack?
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Doesn't do any harm, and I'd had some for well over 12 months. All my password are computer generated passwords so they will be as safe as the previous ones.
 
The password to my email is safe and locked to my mobile device, so they cannot get to my email and change that.

I did get subscribed to like 5 new services today so I've taken the step to use the email verification to log into their Instagram and post a picture there with a text explaining what is happening and a request to get into contact. I *think* I did not reset their password, or at least I did not do so on purpose, but at least I tried.

One thing they subscribed to was a password collection service, so if I were unpleasant I'd have access to all their passwords. Not something I'm particularly keen on.

I also got an IP address from that same service, so I've tried to contact that provider, but their help page was less than useful for anything outside of normal problems, so we'll see what happens there.
 
I've had my gmail for 16 years (got it on the 10th of April 2004).

"erlando" is a popular nickname in both Brazil and Indonesia. Several times a week authorization attempts are popping up on my phone. I block all of them. I wish Google would make some sort of automated logic a la "This user in Denmark has continously blocked authorization attempts from Brazil/Indonesia/whatever. Let's autoblock them."

I've gotten weekly notices from a brazillian university, weird mails from an indonesian bank, invoices from a brazillian mechanic and signups to all sorts of services.

I delete 99,9% of them. I once got an email from a norwegian pastor discussing funeral arrangements. I replied to this saying "you've got the wrong email address".

This is definitely not bots. This is human ignorance.
 
It is not hard to use an incorrect email address. All what it takes is one person to write their email address on a piece of paper, give it to someone else and they type it into their machine. There are several causes of errors in this process.
 
Or you might have been johndoe@hotmail.com then switch to gmail and find johndoe@gmail.com is taken and doe.john98887@gmail.com and occasionally mix them up.
I've lost track of how many variants of my name I've ended up with over the years and emails assigned by ISPs etc. It's why I bought my own domain so I have a permanent email that used to forward to be btinternet email, then another ISP email and now my gmail account.
 
My daughter uses an email address equivalent to DXterra (as in daughter xterra), whereas I use nothing equivalent to my name.

Over the years, she has gotten wedding invitations, requests for verification of purchases, etc. The most poignant was email from the Human Resources of a company congratulating the intended (as opposed to the actual) recipient for being hired. In that particular case, she found the company's phone number, calmled the HR department, and told the relevant person that they were sending the message to the wrong email address, and suggested that they call the new hire. She watched over several weeks as the messages got more and more hositle, and finally informed the new person that she was fired.

In the case of the wedding invitation, she politely declined but wished the new couple a happy and healthy married life.

The last message she received -- two weeks ago -- was to a name something like Frovpm Shperowrirt, as a name not an email address telling her that they were pleased she had stayed in the Houston Hilton.

How anyone got that from DXterra is anyone's guess.
 
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I hadn't received any wayward emails since last Christmas. But just got one about a death in NYC from covid-19. Saddest one I have had to forward.
 
*sigh*, sometimes I wonder how much service providers actually understand.
I contacted their broadband provider in NZ and gave the IP address, asking them to send the user a message informing them of the problem.

I get back "have you tried resetting your password", even after I clearly had indicated they were not hacking my account or even getting in, just mistakenly forwarding me mails.
I wonder if next I'll get the advice to turn my computer on and off again.
 
Lukraak_Sisser said:
*sigh*, sometimes I wonder how much service providers actually understand.
I contacted their broadband provider in NZ and gave the IP address, asking them to send the user a message informing them of the problem.

I get back "have you tried resetting your password", even after I clearly had indicated they were not hacking my account or even getting in, just mistakenly forwarding me mails.
I wonder if next I'll get the advice to turn my computer on and off again.
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I've learned recently that if I want to complain I should be careful not to use any of the key words that will prompt a robo-bot-response. It is so annoying!!
I'm actually not sure it can be done as my success rate is at zero. Good luck!
 
I have over the last three days received a bunch of fairly distressing mails about end of life care for an elderly person in a hospice in another country. I reply saying that they've got the wrong address, receive a reply acknowledging that and presenting apologies, and then half an hour later receive another mail asking for healthcare instructions.
 
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