71–80 of 241 posts
Oh, finally. I’m one of the first.last@gmail folks, which I assumed would never change when I was 13 years old (hah!). Fast forward a few years, I got married, and am stuck with my old name in the address.
A bit off topic, but changing your name when getting married is so strange to me. It is not at all common where I live (Belgium), in fact I don't think I personally know a single person who did.
gmail sucks, I'm getting 2-3 spam emails a day, am I the only one?
My gmail address is first.last@gmail.com. From time to time (and for years) I get someone else’s at firstlast@gmail.com. I thought that a Gmail account that was first.last@gmail also allowed for email sent to firstlast@gmail (no period) to reach my inbox as well. I’ve received some sensitive/PII content over the years. I’ve wondered if this person has access to any of my information? Not necessarily related to this p…
> I’ve wondered if this person has access to any of my information? No. They have just told someone your email address and that someone has sent you stuff. Anyone can do that, if they dream up your email address. People having the same name are a lot more likely to do that. Happened to me as well. I was the first one of the 50 people or so carrying my name to register "first[.]last@gmail.com" back in 2004. At least t…
I have a first.lastname@gmail.com, and my namesake has firstmlastname@gmail.com (with middle initial, and I think they originally created the GMail username without periods).
So, I sometimes receive emails intended for him, by people who saw firstmlastname and think it's firstlastname.
Maybe around a hundred emails so far, over the years.
I've gotten good at telling at a glance that an email is for him, without reading it, and forwarding and deleting.
Fortunately, my namesake is a very accomplished good-guy, so I'm happy to help.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might be an iCloud+ feature only, but if you're on a Mac - you've already got the ability to generate virtual email addresses on the fly. https://support.apple.com/en-us/105078
I love this feature and wish something like it would come to Gmail. I can't rely on iCloud Mail anymore due to its overly aggressive silent spam filtering. Not great if you're trying to log into an account, and you can't receive the recovery emails for that account.
My gmail address is first.last@gmail.com. From time to time (and for years) I get someone else’s at firstlast@gmail.com. I thought that a Gmail account that was first.last@gmail also allowed for email sent to firstlast@gmail (no period) to reach my inbox as well. I’ve received some sensitive/PII content over the years. I’ve wondered if this person has access to any of my information? Not necessarily related to this p…
Handy tip for software testing - Gmail ignores everything after a “+” in the address. So when you’re testing different accounts in your software you can use +1@gmail.com, +2@gmail.com, +3@gmail.com etc. to create many different accounts in the software that all go to the same email address.
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Everybody knows name+something@ maps to name@ so it’s trivial for bad actors to strip the plus part and just spam you directly, losing the per-correspondent distinction.
Which is covered by GP's second suggestion. I add short random password-like strings to these aliases to thwart spammers who might be trying obvious aliases, turning e.g paypal@example.com into paypal.nsi873g@example.com
On Gmail foo+bar@gmail.com is an “alias” for foo@gmail.com. So if you give someone foo+randomstring@gmail.com hoping that will help you map random string to that particular sender, you’re fucked - because anyone who sees foo+randomstring@gmail.com knows it’s an alias for foo@gmail.com, they can just email that directly and bypass your cleverness.
If you’re using a sane alias provider like you described, then it’s likely not an issue.
Oh, finally. I’m one of the first.last@gmail folks, which I assumed would never change when I was 13 years old (hah!). Fast forward a few years, I got married, and am stuck with my old name in the address.
A bit off topic, but changing your name when getting married is so strange to me. It is not at all common where I live (Belgium), in fact I don't think I personally know a single person who did.
I wish they'd let me recover my original -- I lost my TOTP generator, and the codes I'd written down in a paper notebook were rejected. I even hunted down the electronic copy in case there was a transcription error -- seemed like some failure in their systems was causing me to lose access despite having followed proper procedures. Lost a decade and a half of correspondence dating back to my teenage years. I had impor…
I wish they'd let me recover my original -- I lost my TOTP generator, and the codes I'd written down in a paper notebook were rejected. I even hunted down the electronic copy in case there was a transcription error -- seemed like some failure in their systems was causing me to lose access despite having followed proper procedures. Lost a decade and a half of correspondence dating back to my teenage years. I had impor…
Back up your seeds! Aegis for Android lets you do encrypted exports.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I will never use their services again, I was really digusted by this failure Isn’t this inherent to not choosing an (EDIT: external) account-recovery method? The flip side to allowing account recovery at Google’s discretion is lessened security for everyone. (Obviously not black and white. And I agree Google should have flexibility for old accounts. But it’s an odd thing to reject a major provider over.)
They did have a method to recover their account that they tried, though - they said that they used the account recovery codes, but that they were rejected. (Those would be the codes that Google gives you when you initially set up 2FA.)