I have a first.last email, but it's created quite the interesting situation. Turns out some dude in Australia has the same first+last name as me, and he's been using firstlast@gmail.com. As far as I can find from Google's documentation, the email with no dots should be the primary and the one with dots an alias, but I'm guessing because I registered mine ages ago (back in 2006) it takes precedence. I have no idea how he hasn't noticed that his gmail emails are going to another inbox - maybe Google delivers them to us both or something? Regardless, I've gotten very personal emails (like from his therapist) and tried to reach out explaining the situation and asked these parties to let him know he needs to stop using that email, but to no avail.
Honestly the one who is at fault here is Google. If first.last and firstlast are treated as aliases, they straight up should not allow people to create them once the first exists, rather than just send emails to someone else. I've tried to respect my Australian brother's privacy (like not reading his therapist's emails and such), but not everyone is gonna do that.
I have exactly the same issue (I get an insane amount of email for other Firstname Surname people that isn't me from various other places in the world), but I'm 100% sure at this point that it's people using the wrong email address, as occasionally when I contact the people to let them know they've emailed the wrong address, they have actually told me the real email address they should have used, and they were missing a number, or in one case it should have been an initial instead of the full first name.
I used to also think that Google were screwing up by allowing a 'clash' of firstname.surname and firstnamesurname, and maybe they did a bit in the 2004-2009 period, but with lots of testing over the years (sending test emails to both), I'm confident now it's 'just' other people's emails getting 'simplified' too much when being told, and it ends up being sent to me.
I do however think Google shouldn't have allowed that alias situation to arise.
I also think (based on the fact that my 'un-dotted' email alias has been successfully used to sign up for various services for the other people) that many online services just have very poor sign-up validations of emails.
When I was a kid, I used to get a ton of emails for a guy who put the wrong email address on a dating site. It was always interesting at 13 to have to tell women that I wasn't the man they were interested in.
Are you sure he actually has that address? I get lots of emails mistakenly sent to me, some via a dotted version of my address, but I'm pretty sure those people (or the ones trying to contact them) have just misremembered or typoed their actual address. I'd be very surprised if Google did allow firstlast and first.last to exist as distinct addresses tied to separate acccounts.
I have this same issue! But I can log in with or without dots… but it’s like someone else thinks their email is my email without the dots. I can’t really figure out what is happening. The volume is way too high for it to be spam though.
It would be just he uses a similar email, say last+first@gmail and gives it out incorrectly at times. Or people assume it is his. My friend has a first+last@gmail and I constantly confuse the order (or was it last+first? idk), a decade later. So you two are just seeing a subset of incorrectly addressed email, imo.
I remember a decade+ ago when this was discovered as some issue and caused a bunch of drama in the blogosphere.
Same here, I have first.last since 2005: every combination of dots or not are aliases to my first.last and cannot be registered.
There a thousands of first last in the world, and apparently, all of those that have a gmail account are also quite bad at giving their email address... ^^ They probably have firstlast123 and the numbers evade!
I receive things daily, from simple accounts miscreated (thanks for the one month Netflix account 6 years ago) to plane tickets, notarized acts for land sell, medical things etc. I tried to respond etc. but no one understands that I'm not their recipient. Crazy.
If Im not mistaken, periods are ignored entirely. I regularly sign up for free trials with variations on first.last@gmail.com, firstlast@gmail.com, f.i.r.s.t.last, etc and they all come to my inbox.
Oh god I have this problem with my firstlast@outlook.com address. I have a common english name so get the emails of other people from all over the world. The worst are subscriptions and regular invoices.
Honestly the one who is at fault here is Google. If first.last and firstlast are treated as aliases, they straight up should not allow people to create them once the first exists, rather than just send emails to someone else. I've tried to respect my Australian brother's privacy (like not reading his therapist's emails and such), but not everyone is gonna do that.