I don't even really know about to go about describing this because it's so messed up.
I use my personal Gmail account for Amazon (the US store). My email address is, for the sake of argument,
myname@gmail.com. Recently I got an email from amazon.co.uk thanking me for opening an account there. I didn't. And almost immediately afterwards, a constant stream of amazon.co.uk emails that are basically receipts for Android apps that someone has downloaded from Amazon.co.uk. Most of them are free but the occasional paid. It's all the kind of crap that young girls download - fashion model games, wedding planner games, Bubble Pop this, Makeup Artist that. But the email address the receipts are sent to is stated as
myname@googlemail.com. And the name associated with this email address is the same as my name, only with a different middle name.
So what's basically happened is that someone has the same email address as me only it's
googlemail.com instead of
gmail.com. Apparently the two are interchangeable, in that if you have
yourname@gmail.com you can also use
yourname@googlemail.com. But seemingly this person was able to sign up for the exact same Google user name as mine, only with googlemail instead of gmail. I have no idea why anyone should be able to do such a thing, but there it is.
So armed with this virtual clone of my email address, this person has signed up for an Amazon.co.uk account, and I get their freaking receipt emails. I have also gotten an email from Apple confirming the creation of an Apple ID with this googlemail email account. Of course I can't sign into their Amazon.co.uk or Apple account because I don't have their password. And at least I'm not paying for any of this crap because I don't see any charges coming off the bank account I use for Amazon.
Confusing isn't it? It's like Amazon knows that the two email addresses are different because the Amazon.co.uk account isn't linked to my Amazon.com account and they are not linked to the same bank account. But Google sees the two email addresses as the same, and sends me their email. But does this person get my emails too? It's all very creepy and gives me the jitters.
Of course there is no "I received this email in error" link in the Amazon.co.uk emails, it's a do-not-reply address. And I guess I could contact gmail about the problem, but getting through to that company is like requesting an audience with the Pope.
But overall it's not good that something like this could happen, not good at all. If gmail and googlemail accounts are interchangeable, then how come someone was able to open a googlemail account with a user name that I already use for gmail (and have used since gmail was started in 2004)? And why would they send me their emails to my gmail account? You like to think that something like an email account is infallible, but here I am in 2015 listening into someone else's communication like it's the 1970's and I'm listening to the neighbor's phone calls over a party line (which I remember doing as a kid
)
Anyone else have any experience with crap like this?