If your number is 330-416-4288...

...why did you just send me a picture of your dog?



Cute dog, though, and decent quality for a camera phone.

I'm starting to learn the downside to having a "desirable" e-mail address: people forget it's not theirs.

I signed up for Gmail on April 23rd, 2004. This was pretty early, considering Google only announced the service on April 1st of that year, and it was in closed beta for many months afterwords. I got in because Google had just purchased Blogger and gave a free Gmail account to anyone with a blogger account (pretty good marketing, no? Give all the bloggers access to your e-mail service, then let them tell all their moms about it, since those are the only people who read blogs). Since I got in the gates before the barbarian hordes, so to speak, I got the highly desirable "JoeCool" screen name. No longer did I have to deal with a stupid and utterly random "385" after my e-mail account. Life was going to be wonderful.

Or, at least, so I thought.

Apparently, there is a certain, rather large, subsection of society that can't remember its e-mail address. I very, very frequently get confirmation e-mails saying something like "Thank you for creating an account on (insert website here). Click here to finalize the process." No, they are not spam or phishing scams. They are actually legitimate account creation e-mails, sent to me because someone thinks he has my e-mail address. I'm sure some of them are just times when someone, not wanting to give their real e-mail address, just entered a "dummy" address, not caring about the poor person who's address he entered and now has to wade through the mound of spam. It doesn't help him, though, because since he entered a "dummy" e-mail address, he can't finalize the account creation.

But I get e-mails where this is very clearly not the case. For instance, last June, Joseph Roy living at 330 Rosemonte in Thibodaux, LA 70301 purchased golf ball finder glasses, a twelve pack of golf balls, and a golfing glove, and received a free promotional golf towel from The Golf Warehouse, a total purchase of $99.59. How do I know this? Because he had the order confirmation send to me. For a while, I considered printing out the order confirmation and snail-mailing it to him, along with a polite note asking not to use my e-mail address on web sites, and also warning about sending personal details to strangers. You never know where that personal information might end up. I decided not to, but I think this will be my future policy when people send me their addresses.

This is not an isolated incident. There is a woman named Sharon Faber who is convinced I am her son. I have been receiving correspondence (sometimes including pictures) from her for over a year. The first few times, I assumed it was spam, or a typo in the e-mail address and deleted it, but after she kept e-mailing, me I realized she just plain had the wrong e-mail address. The problem was, by that point, it felt a little awkward e-mailing someone who had been sending me e-mail for a few months and telling her she had the wrong e-mail address. "Hi, Sharon. I'm not actually your son, but thanks for the pictures of your grandchildren from last Sunday's barbecue. I hope you had a good time." Now, I just filter out her e-mails, or delete them without reading them.

I have learned from that incident and now I immediately e-mail people who obviously have the wrong address. This happens at least once every couple weeks. It's usually a mother or grandmother or teenage a teenage girl sending a note to her son/grandson/classmate. In one recent incident someone sent me One Of Those e-mails (Terry Pratchett capitalization intentional). You know how they go. "This comes from a New York Times article: 70% of people in Los Angeles are illegal immigrants who caused the sewer to back up on Super Bowl Sunday when they all flushed the toilet at the same time during halftime, which flooded the sewers, startling the alligators, who snapped at the ducks causing them to all quack at the same time, but since their quacks don't echo, it caused all the Oak trees to produce acorns, even though they don't normally do so until they're 50 years old." You know those e-mails, particularly if your name rhymes with Shmristine Shmacosta, since you, as far as I can tell, originate them all. Anyways, back to the woman, not only did I get to tell her that I wasn't her grandson, I pointed her to the relevant Snopes article and recommended she research internet claims before believing them and sending them on (politely, of course).

It has been particularly bad in the past few days. Apparently, someone identifying himself as "Joe Smith" (that's original) is looking for homes in Hillsboro, Oregon, and has signed me up to receive his new home listing notifications. Jason Merritt of RE/MAX equity group, inc.—who can be reached at (503) 250-3536 or homes@jasonmerritt.com (his website is www.jasonmerritt.com)—is very politely sending me the new listings every day. Thank you, Jason, but I'm not interested in moving to Oregon at this time. (Did you know you can get a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom 1655 sq. ft. home in Hillsboro for $289,000? Apparently, Hillsboro must be a fairly affluent area, since that's very comparable to our condo, which is currently valued around $330,000-$350,000.) Also, someone has decided I am interested in a car, and has had quotes for a Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, and Chevrolet Cobalt sent to me from Roseville, CA-area dealerships. So far, I've received about three e-mails from each dealership every day for the last four or five days. Persistent, those car dealers. Again, thanks but no thanks.

Of course, it's not isolated to my Gmail account. It increases the spam on my other e-mail account as well. After Mr. Roy buys his golf clubs, or whoever just signed up for "Strip4U.com" sends his account activation to me, the next thing he does is try to log into my e-mail account to retrieve his e-mail. Fortunately, none of them played a certain 3D shooter from the 90's, and as such don't know my password. Unfortunately, that means they use the "forgot your password?" link to try to retrieve it. And since my Gmail account is tied to my Yahoo account, a message shows up there saying something like "Click the link to reset your Gmail account password." Again, not a phishing attempt: it really does link to gmail.com. I estimate I get about one of these e-mails a week.

So far, I'd like to think I've been patient with these people. Even though I couldn't possibly understand how in a hundred million years you could possibly forget something so simple and basic as your e-mail address, somehow people do, and I'm the one to bear the price for it. This can't go on. I am hereby requesting to the world that you stop using my e-mail address to sign up for your accounts. I am also requesting that you stop sending me e-mails, thinking you know me.

And just for clarification, if you think you have the e-mail address joecool (at) gmail (dot) com, you don't.

If you think you have the e-mail address joe.cool (at) gmail (dot) com, you don't (since Gmail doesn't differentiate between dotted and un-dotted e-mail addresses).

If you think I'm your grandson/son/classmate/ex-boyfriend/coworker/dentist/drug dealer/stripper you met at that bar that one time/fence, I'm not.

If you send me, or in anyway cause your personal information to be sent to me, it will be posted publicly on the Internet for all the world to see. Credit card numbers are appreciated.