GMail contact - misroute / security issue

Mon Sep 29 23:17:15 UTC 2014

On 09/29/14 10:06, Nicolai wrote:
> Most likely reason: gmail is so common that someone mistypes 
> johnsmith at example.com as johnsmith at gmail.com, not paying attention to 
> what they're doing. It happens.

More likely, I think, is that newbies think that email addresses already 
exist for everyone on the planet at firstlast at gmail.com, and they just 
give that when asked (maybe they think it's throwaway and never actually 
expect to get any email there).  I'm in the same boat.   It doesn't 
bother me all that much because gmail is not my primary mail service.  I 
use it to store big stuff that's clogging the mail service I do pay 
for.  In fact, it can be entertaining, as I get usernames and passwords 
for sites that this guy signed up for.  He's also a poker player and has 
recently tried to enroll at an art college.  The latter I could reply to 
and explain that their prospective student is an idiot and should not be 
accepted, but that's what will happen anyway if I don't say anything.

-- 
Jeff Woolsey {woolsey,jlw}@{jlw,jxh}.com first.last@{gmail,jlw}.com
Spum bad keming.
Nature abhors a straight antenna, a clean lens, and unused storage capacity.
"Delete! Delete! OK!" -Dr. Bronner on disk space management
"Card sorting, Joel." -me, re Solitaire