What would you do if you get email communication not intended for you?

Yup, and I just delete them, I don’t even try and open them with all the virus bullcrap with emails these days.

Ok.. what if you think it is from legit source but sent to you by mistake due to similar names etc? That would be very rare occurrence though.

I received some emails from a travel agent in Toronto intended for a person with the same name as me, and a gmail address that was very close to mine. I also got an email from a lawyer intended for the same person.

Both time I replied to let them know they had sent it to the wrong person, that I did not live in Ontario but in California. Both times they apologized and thanked me fro letting them know.

I reply once if I think it can help the sender avoid a problem.

For about a year some real estate company on the east coast has been sending me detailed instructions meant for some other guy, spelling out tasks he needs to perform before a property sale.

I let them know a couple of times but it hasn’t stopped. I’m curious how this hasn’t screwed up the guy’s career.

I don’t think that’s happened to me with email, that I remember. I would do as zenvelo wrote, and let them know. That’s what I have done with wrong number phone calls and text messages, with similar results.

I once sent a professional email to the wrong address by mistake and got a very vulgar response as if it were from the person I had emailed, which was confusing.

^lol..)

Delete them. Don’t open them. Don’t reply to them. Like @SQUEEKY2 says there’s always the risk of malware and I wouldn’t put it past spammers sending these out on purpose to elicit a response.

It happens all the time. My Gmail address is (not really, but for example) wwright@gmail.com

There are several people who have entered wwright@gmail.com as their email addresses, even though their real email address is something like wlwright@gmail, or wmwright@gmail, and so on.

I have gotten bills and cash transfer statements from a bank in South America, Past Due notices from PayPal, advertisements from realtors, etc. Oh, and notes from a second grade teacher in Seattle for a kid that isn’t mine.

The only one where I successfully contacted the sender was the teacher in Seattle. All the others – nothing I can do. Although it’s sort of interesting to know that Mr. Wright is sending money to someone.

I had a family add my email to their family mailing list, so I’d get updates on all the kids and grandkids, vacation plans, death notices, lots of pictures, and any of those chain letters your grandmas used to send. (this was hotmail, long long ago) I probably got a couple hundred family updates.

I tried to notify two or three different people. As far as I can tell, they just added another address for the guy with the same name as me, and kept me on.

Normally I’d handle it like @zenvelo each time I get something from someone not intended me, but none of this was one-to-one communication, so I didn’t worry too much. It was just funny to me, and might have been disconcerting to them, the longer it went on.

^^lol..last 2 responses are hilarious..)

This has been happening to me for years. The first few times I forwarded the emails to the correct address which I was able to find online. Now I just delete them.

I would block the sender without even replying.

I assume you’re not talking about spam but an actual email from a human being. In that case, I’d simply do the same thing I do for spam, ignore and delete.

It depends, if it was in a work context I would ignore the email. If it was from family and nothing personal, I’d probably let the person know they sent me an email by mistake