I get a festive and constant assortment of Gmail meant for another Bob Morris, including family pictures, financial information, gossip, whatever. People, I don’t care about your BBQ plans! Really, I don’t. Nor do I want to be on your listservs for insurance agents or agricultural products. Sigh.
Part of the problem is my name is common. People make errors and don’t get the correct email address, which might be something like bobjmorris@gmail.com.
Gmail makes this worse by not recognizing dots in an email address name. Thus, bobmorris@gmail.com is the same as my actual email address, bob.morris@gmail.com, to Gmail. You can see the problem. People get an email address wrong, put in bobmorris, and it all comes to me. Generally there are dozens each month. I filter them into a folder called “Wrong Bob Morris” which I inspect occasionally in case the email might be important and they should be notified.
People worry about privacy on the net. There’s even less privacy when you sent email to the wrong person.