Tag: email

Or: The hazards of having a short, easy-to-remember email address.

I got in early on Gmail. When it was first rolling out, it was the hot new service that everybody wanted. But at the time, you couldn’t just sign up. You needed an invitation from someone on the inside. From one of the cool kids. When I finally found someone who was willing to sponsor me with one of those precious invitations, I ran quick like a bunny to see if my last name was still available. Please please please I hope I get it.

I was worried that I was already too late to the party. I was afraid I’d get stuck with n_gulley2919@gmail.com. Or worse, I could end up in cute nickname hell: booboobear72@gmail.com or sweetcheeks11@gmail.com

But I was lucky. My last name was still available. There it was: gulley@gmail.com. Clean, compact, accurate, memorable. I was thrilled!

I somehow thought more people would notice and admire my awesomely compact email address. “Oh sir,” I imagined them saying, “I cannot help but notice your awesomely compact email address. How clever and far-seeing you are! Let us book you into the Presidential Suite.” In fact, the awesomely compact nature of my email address has only been remarked on once, to my knowledge, and it did not result in a Presidential Suite upgrade. Or even a discounted hot dog topping.

But there was one group that was happy to take advantage of my situation. Consider this: of the 13,868 people on the planet with my last name (ooh look, a source!), I’m the only one who got it for an email address. Which is pretty cool, except… I can’t actually keep all those kids off my lawn. All of those people feel strangely entitled to use my address. On account, I suppose, of it being their last name too. As far as I can tell, it hardly matters to them that they’ll never read the email sent to that address. They nevertheless keep filling out forms day after day after day, pretending that my address is theirs.

And so I present herewith a partial list of the first names of people whose email I get.

• Aaron
• Akirrah
• Andrew
• Antonio
• Deshadria
• Edna
• Eumonee
• Dan
• Deshadria
• Dewey
• Forrest
• Genita
• Hesley
• Jean
• Jimmie
• Kendra
• Kerona
• Lowell
• Margaret
• Maria
• Michael
• Paige
• Regina
• Renaurd
• Tameka
• Tsietsi
• Virge

As far as I can tell, these are all legitimately people who share my last name. I don’t know if they put down my email address because of an honest mistake, or because their intent is to misdirect any follow-up mail. All I know is I get an awful lot of it, and since it’s legitimate mail to someone, it doesn’t get weeded out by spam filters.

I’m reminded of the story of the California man who chose NULL as his license plate. He thought this might make it hard for him to get tickets. The database would assign any fine to NULL and so the infraction would get ignored and lost. But it worked just the other way around. Fines that were lost found him. See How a ‘NULL’ License Plate Landed One Hacker in Ticket Hell | WIRED.

I wanted a compact address, but what I got was a giant funnel.

A lot of the email I get is straightforward retail correspondence (Paige, I know ALL ABOUT that stuff you order from Etsy. You know what I’m talking about.). But some of it is from angry creditors. It’s hard to unsubscribe from angry creditors, and it kind of makes you feel bad, like you’re really the one who did something wrong. Jimmie, please pay for those medical diagnostics! It’s the right thing to do. Plus I’m catching some serious heat here.

In general, it still seems weird how easily email addresses can lead to strange mischief. You can unsubscribe from solicitation, but you can’t really unsubscribe from bills. I get emailed bills all the time and I can’t make them stop. For these people, I’m often empowered to reset their account passwords. I’ve tried to log in and remove my email address, but then two-factor authentication sends a text to Kendra or Genita or Dan and that’s the end of that. So I’m lodged in all these accounts in hard-to-reverse ways.

I still like my email address, but I’m thinking I should check and see if booboobear72@gmail.com is still available.