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0 pointsJohnny5552y ago0 comments

Same, I get a lot of sensitive correspondence, things like divorce settlements from lawyers, mortgage applications, correspondence with doctors with a lot of personal details (that the person cc’ed me on), airline reservations, etc.

Usually I’ll reply to the sender and tell them they have the wrong email address, some don’t believe me, sometimes they ask me if I know the person (out of a billion gmail users), some complain that I took to long to tell them about the wrong address, and sometimes a lawyer will direct me to delete all copies of the errant email…

I always reply back to tell them that the email lands on multiple devices and is downloaded and backed up automatically and to see if they want to pay me on a time and materials basis or if they want a project based fee. None have been willing to pay me to cleanup their mistake.

Way back when I signed up with gmail, I was happy to get a first-initial.lastname@gmail.com address, now I wish I’d gone with something more obscure.

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gsharma2y ago

Same situation here! My HN Username @gmail and my last name is a very common last name in India.

I’ve received people’s tax returns (including their SSN), airline tickets and hotel reservations, matrimonial proposals, photographs, etc.

I often used to email back and let people know about the mistake, but rarely do it now unless there is sensitive/urgent information.

To deal with some of the repeated unwanted emails, I have rules created to label those emails with a specific label. I use Google scripts to auto-delete all emails from that label which are older than 365 days. It cleans up repeated transaction emails from Indian banks/credit cards, newsletters, etc. but also gives me a year to retrieve the email if it was actually meant for me.

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