Don't Be Email
April 1, 2024 12:37 PM Subscribe
User Complaint About Existing Services Leads Google to Create Search-Based Webmail; Search is Number Two Online Activity – Email is Number One; "Heck, Yeah," Say Google Founders: Gmail's 20th anniversary: Technology's best April Fool's prank yet
first link points to "v" missed the ctrl button on that one.
posted by shenkerism at 12:45 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
posted by shenkerism at 12:45 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
chrome says the connection to V is not secure
posted by mittens at 12:51 PM on April 1 [4 favorites]
posted by mittens at 12:51 PM on April 1 [4 favorites]
V still has a lot to say.
If you want to talk about swallowing mice, the python thread is a few FPPs down.
posted by mittens at 12:56 PM on April 1 [3 favorites]
If you want to talk about swallowing mice, the python thread is a few FPPs down.
posted by mittens at 12:56 PM on April 1 [3 favorites]
Needs the "v" tag (Note the "Users that often use this tag: chavenet")
posted by oulipian at 12:57 PM on April 1 [4 favorites]
posted by oulipian at 12:57 PM on April 1 [4 favorites]
Mod note: Made my best guess where that link was supposed to go and fixed it. Drop a note on the contact form if it's not right. Carry on.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 1:22 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 1:22 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
Made my best guess where that link was supposed to go and fixed it. Drop a note on the contact form if it's not right. Carry on.
It's right, thanks & apologies (though I appreciate the V. jokes)
posted by chavenet at 1:31 PM on April 1 [1 favorite]
It's right, thanks & apologies (though I appreciate the V. jokes)
posted by chavenet at 1:31 PM on April 1 [1 favorite]
The best thing about my GMail account has been the opportunity over the years to get to know all the people around the world who share my name and therefore think they share my email address.
Hello, namesake in Brighton, I hope your golf buddies managed to reach you. Oh, and that vacation you planned last year sounded real nice!
Hello, namesake in Melbourne, I hope that house sale went well. If you could get your real estate agents to stop contacting me, that would be nice.
Hello, namesake in New York, I warned your doctor's office that they were violating HIPPAA by sending me your private medical records without your permission. I hope they learned not to send them over insecure email, especially to addresses they hadn't verified!
posted by biogeo at 3:06 PM on April 1 [19 favorites]
Hello, namesake in Brighton, I hope your golf buddies managed to reach you. Oh, and that vacation you planned last year sounded real nice!
Hello, namesake in Melbourne, I hope that house sale went well. If you could get your real estate agents to stop contacting me, that would be nice.
Hello, namesake in New York, I warned your doctor's office that they were violating HIPPAA by sending me your private medical records without your permission. I hope they learned not to send them over insecure email, especially to addresses they hadn't verified!
posted by biogeo at 3:06 PM on April 1 [19 favorites]
ahhh, The Joys of Owning an ‘OG’ Email Account
posted by chavenet at 3:22 PM on April 1 [6 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 3:22 PM on April 1 [6 favorites]
The best thing about my GMail account has been the opportunity over the years to get to know all the people around the world who share my name and therefore think they share my email address.I call them my e-mail doppelgangers and I know WAY too much about them.
ahhh, The Joys of Owning an ‘OG’ Email AccountThis is my life as well. For my personal e-mail (or at least much of it) I use a Gmail address dating back to the invite-required era.
These days at least half of the e-mail received by that account is meant for other people with similar names.
Last week's best example was a gentleman with the first same initial and same last name spelling as me who has apparently arranged for a specialty service to send him a couple hundred dollars' worth of items clearly intended to beat a drug test, as the e-mail confirmation for the order contained not just his name, address, and phone number, but also the items ordered: "Incognito Belt - Premixed Synthetic Urine on a belt", "Stash Boxers - Stay Calm & Be Prepared", and "Clear Choice Disposable Heat Pad". TMI, my dude, TMI. Definitely more worrisome was the fact that later the same day I received an e-mail meant for the same individual thanking him for his interest in obtaining a commercial drivers' license from a trucking school and giving more information about enrollment.
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:50 PM on April 1 [12 favorites]
Yeah, I have a myfirstname.mylastname@gmail account and it has given me weird insights into the Midwestern farming sector and North Carolina real estate market via my doppelgangers there.
posted by nangua at 3:55 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
posted by nangua at 3:55 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
It's entertaining to get wrong number emails, like the time when some lady, clearly looking for someone else who shares my name, emailed me to say "hey [firstname], is this your email?" And I replied "Nah this is my pager." And we sent each other jokes back and forth a few times after that, it was fun!
posted by MiraK at 5:03 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
posted by MiraK at 5:03 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
Yeah I definitely have gotten signed up for all manner of ridiculous stuff with my firstname + last initial gmail address. I try to be nice...every once in a while someone will reach out to me begging them to forward something and I typically oblige. Worst is when I get emailed about some reservation "I" made that's actually a thing I'd like to do.
posted by potrzebie at 5:07 PM on April 1 [1 favorite]
posted by potrzebie at 5:07 PM on April 1 [1 favorite]
I have a jokey adjective.animalname account that I use to send funny in-jokes to my wife and there is a woman in Minnesota who keeps signing up for new things using that address over the past few years. How can she be so oblivious that she never receives things. It also appears that she no showed for a job once.
posted by mmascolino at 5:10 PM on April 1 [6 favorites]
posted by mmascolino at 5:10 PM on April 1 [6 favorites]
I have some invites left if anyone needs one.
posted by goatdog at 5:22 PM on April 1 [18 favorites]
posted by goatdog at 5:22 PM on April 1 [18 favorites]
For a brief period of time, I got a bunch of shopping related emails for Ickey Woods. Pretty sure they were legit based on the items and the fact that the shipping address shows up on Google Maps as the location of a business with this interesting website.
posted by Ickster at 7:34 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
posted by Ickster at 7:34 PM on April 1 [2 favorites]
I’ll never forget the time I called my email doppel to let him know sensitive information was being sent to me. His response was “oh, perfect- let me give you my email address so you can forward me anything you get from now on.” Then he inquired about my family to see if maybe we were related.
(I told him I wasn’t an answering service and he should try using his actual email address in the future)
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 8:09 PM on April 1 [3 favorites]
(I told him I wasn’t an answering service and he should try using his actual email address in the future)
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 8:09 PM on April 1 [3 favorites]
Thank you to Metafilter for getting me that invitation to Gmail oh so many years back.
posted by caddis at 8:53 PM on April 1 [4 favorites]
posted by caddis at 8:53 PM on April 1 [4 favorites]
I was in college when Gmail first rolled out as an invite-only service. Someone in my fraternity, let's call him "Steve", was actually working for Google at the time and had a girlfriend I'll call "Sarah". Knowing Steve is how I got my invite, but he managed to score a special gift for himself and his girlfriend.
Back then (and possibly still? I dunno.) there was a minimum character size for your Gmail username, I think 7-8 characters. But Steve managed to score himself "steve@gmail.com" and also got his girlfriend her own "sarah@gmail.com", which as far as I know remain to this day.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:11 AM on April 2 [1 favorite]
Back then (and possibly still? I dunno.) there was a minimum character size for your Gmail username, I think 7-8 characters. But Steve managed to score himself "steve@gmail.com" and also got his girlfriend her own "sarah@gmail.com", which as far as I know remain to this day.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:11 AM on April 2 [1 favorite]
Oh, hello, namesake in Shellharbour City, I don't think I've met you before! Looks like you're going to miss your Rotary Club's trivia night tonight, unless you find out about it some other way!
posted by biogeo at 2:13 PM on April 2 [1 favorite]
posted by biogeo at 2:13 PM on April 2 [1 favorite]
MeFi was on it pretty quickly. Still kind of mad that I gave out an invite to my friend who scored librarian@gmail but I am okay with firstname@gmail
posted by jessamyn at 2:24 PM on April 2 [2 favorites]
posted by jessamyn at 2:24 PM on April 2 [2 favorites]
Post #6697, made nearly 20 years ago.
This post is #203149.
posted by hippybear at 2:31 PM on April 2 [1 favorite]
This post is #203149.
posted by hippybear at 2:31 PM on April 2 [1 favorite]
Fond memories of using google mail as basically a free online file storage system (which you can still do, of course, but they've cracked down on sharing email passwords to all and sundry, plus of course there's google drive now). It wasn't hard to get an invite code so we used to make accounts just to share movies and comics, or whatever.
posted by subdee at 1:20 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
posted by subdee at 1:20 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
And then there was gchat... Maybe if discord sells out and becomes terrible we'll all go back to gchat...
posted by subdee at 1:21 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
posted by subdee at 1:21 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
Ah, the wrongly-addressed emails meant for a guy in the UK, who had signed up to a dating website for cheaters, and which included his full contact details including home address. The temptation to screenshot and post to his wife was strong.
Also I really hope the person who has tried to reset my Microsoft account like 50 times eventually realises that they are typing my Gmail address not theirs.
posted by Pink Frost at 1:47 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
Also I really hope the person who has tried to reset my Microsoft account like 50 times eventually realises that they are typing my Gmail address not theirs.
posted by Pink Frost at 1:47 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
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posted by riotnrrd at 12:45 PM on April 1 [3 favorites]