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My wife has received an email from a Philadelphia law firm requesting a reference for some one regarding an asylum claim.
The email looks completely legit, there are no links to click, no attachments to mistakenly download and all there is is a request to reply with the reference for the named person.
The law firm exists, their website numbers all match up, and the sender is a named associate on their pages with the right numbers. Phoning the landlines on the site goes to voicemail. I havent phoned the cell number.
Now, the weird thing is that the email was sent to my wife's Gmail, but with a middle initial in her email address so instead of
Namesurname@gmail.com
its been sent to
name.A.surname@gmail.com
And still got to her inbox. I've tested that and i can email it too.
So, two weird things:
1) the lawyer request; just a mistake on their part? Or something intricately sinister?
2) the Gmail 'wrong' email working, what's that about?
Ignore it
gmail ignores fullstops in usernames so
slackboy
slack.boy
sl.ack.boy
are all the same gmail user
not sure about the random initial in the middle - that shouldn't work.
Why not just reply and say they must have got the wrong address? There is no danger to you and if someone genuinely is seeking asylum and got the wrong address by accident it wouldn't be good. To be sure you could always start a fresh email rather than hitting reply but I'm not sure it would make any difference
Could possibly be gmail oddness intended for a person called name.A.surname in the states. When I worked for a US company, most of my US colleagues names included the middle initial by default
Do you know the person they are asking about?
You could try this to see if it offers any clues Trace an email with its full headers - Gmail Help (google.com)
I had an old gmail address that used to keep getting invoices and other docs from companies in South Africa. There must have been a mix up somewhere in Google. It may have been an old @googlemail.com address or something. I ignored them all.
You would be best placed to ignore it as it's very easy to set up a genuine looking business/domain. My guess is they will ask you for all sorts of details to "verify" you are the right person and then those details will be used somewhere they shouldn't be.
Ignore it
This.
I’d also igone.
I was an early gmail adopter when it was in beta so have my email address as name.surname@gmail.com
The downside of this is that I do get quite a bit of this wrong email type stuff where people think they’re using a subtly different gmail address but it gets entered wrong somewhere and ends up with mine.
By far the most prolific of these is a guy in Texas with my name but the middle initial W. This guy seems to have money troubles as I get lots of credit application type emails, as well as dating site emails! Less prolific but also get occasional mail for an Aussie estate agent and also someone in South Africa. I initially tried to pass things on etc but it didn’t stop the emails so now they just get filtered into junk.
gmail ignores fullstops in usernames so
Thank you!
I've ended up receiving some emails to first.last@gmail.com instead of firstlast@gmail.com and it was confusing me.
You learn something every day.
OP:
I had something similar recently where I'd received a "legit" email not to for me. Funnily enough, it was also from a solicitor.
I replied with "this isn't meant for me" and they were very happy as it was a genuine mistake for a similarly named person and I didn't slow things down after their mistake.
Cheers all, my wife pointed out that she does use her middle initial so the full stop/Gmail formatting thing would make sense.
I'll get her to email the company as a standalone approsch
If I knew the person seeking asylum I'd respond, if not I'd ignore it.
By far the most prolific of these is a guy in Texas with my name but the middle initial W. This guy seems to have money troubles
You are George.bush@gmail.com and ICMFP.
I would look at the headers first to see if it's actually from the sender it says it is; ignore it if not, respond to say it's a mistake otherwise.
The middle initial doesn't make sense to me. I know gmail ignores dots and I know you can add a + to the end and it ignores anything after that, but adding a letter in the middle should make it a different user. When I got my gmail address, first.last@gmail was taken so I got first.m.last@gmail, but to gmail, ignoring the dots, firstlast is just a string of text, and firstmlast is a different string, gmail doesn't connect your address with your name.
Is it possible, @Pook, that your wife might have two gmail addresses, one with the middle initial and the other without, with a combined Inbox (which gmail does facilitate)?
I’ll get her to email the company as a standalone approsch
Happens to me quite a lot - last week I got sign up details to a pension scheme and HR portal in Utah.
I regularly receive invitations to tender for house refurbishments in Hawaii - I would, but its a hell of a commute and my building skills are sub par at best.
Why would I'd simply delete it. If it is legit it's clearly not your concern.
My wife gets occasional emails regarding a low ranking US government official's travel plans. Sent to Gmail but with the dot. Dots do make a difference before the @