Tell me about your email doppelgänger
I had no idea this was such a thing!
Two weeks ago, I opened the Substack app and dashed off a quick Note:
There’s a woman in England whose email address differs ever so slightly from one of mine. People she does business with are constantly forgetting to add the 1 after her name, resulting in a lot of her mail—including some quite sensitive information—landing in my inbox instead of hers. This has been going on for YEARS, to the point that I have replied to some of the businesses (when it is clearly a real communication, not spam) in hopes of a redirect.
After the second time her hair appointment reminder came to me, I actually looked up the salon and wrote them directly. They told me they passed on the message and the woman was so embarrassed, said it happens all the time. At least now I can forward her the misdirected mail myself.
Anyway, I’m really sorry her car loan application was denied but props to her for signing up for that tap-dancing class.
The tap lessons sounds straight out of the Friends episode where Monica’s credit card is stolen by a woman who turns out to be way more adventurous and enviably fun (such a ’90s-optimism take on identity theft), but it’s real. And since I got the confirmation email, I have to wonder if it was Not-Me herself who typed in the address wrong.
To my immense surprise, this Note struck a chord with readers. Other people started sharing their stories of misdelivered mail meant for someone with a similar email address. And gosh, how personal some of this mail is! Communications from doctors’ offices, bill collectors, divorce lawyers—private mail certainly not intended for a stranger’s eyes.
It makes me wonder how many missives meant for me, Lissa, have wound up with some mysterious Lisa out there whose address mirrors my personal email account, sans the second S.
Eek.
How about you? What adventures is your email twin missing out on because they landed in your inbox? Monana and I want to know!
Omg, I didn't really think about the fact that anyone else experienced this! I've been getting emails for various Helen McLaughlins for YEARS. Like, very personal emails (from dating sites...when I know that particular Helen McLaughlin is married, based on other emails I've gotten). There's a Helen McLaughlin in Australia, at least two in the UK, one in Canada, and even one in the US whose emails I get. Messages from school headmasters, e-bills for phone service, online order confirmations for clothing, you name it. I even have an entire folder in my Gmail account labeled "The Other Helen McLaughlin," wherein I save many of these messages. 😂 I write back to almost every single email to let the person know they've reached the wrong one of us. Often I get replies replete with apologies, which is funny, because I don't really feel inconvenienced by any of this, lol. Except, of course, when I find myself subscribed to emails that I know I definitely never subscribed to...that gets a little annoying.
I had a book idea a few years ago that included these various emails for other Helen McLaughlins. Never did anything with it, but it's still floating around somewhere in the back of my mind. Anyway, what a fun thing to chat about! Thanks for bringing this up!
Late in my junior year of college, I realized in a panic that the room my friend and I had committed to did not have a high-speed network connection to the campus computer labs, and that I wasn't sure I could manage my classes without that necessity (which had been impossible a mere two years before). We were desperately trying to negotiate for a different housing assignment with a campus housing coordinator, who did not seem sympathetic to our pleas.
Complicating factors was that her email client consistently auto-completed my address when she was intending to instead email her recently-ex-husband. At 20, I was quite at a loss about the etiquette in these situations.