[SamBam]

I have [first-initial][last-name]@gmail.con.

My last name is pretty uncommon, but there are at least a thousand of us or so in the US.

I probably get a dozen emails a month to people who are not me (not counting all the ones that end up in the spam folder after I'm on a damn list).

Susan. Stephen. Another Sam. So many damn S. Lastnames around.

On occasion I've tracked the people down. I've forwarded their emails if they seem important. And whenever I ask that they be more careful and memorize their own email address, they get defensive and tell me someone else made a mistake.

Buddy, this email was was an automated response from a computer after you signed up for something. No, it did not just randomly decide to send to my @gmail instead of your actual @yahoo address. YOU just don't know your own email.

[bsder]

The real problem is that you are all on the same email provider.

If we didn't have a monoculture in email providing, this would be far less of an issue.

[lazyasciiart]

Do you think yahoo and Gmail are the same email provider?

[zargon]

Enough people clearly do -- they think that all email addresses end in @gmail.com, even if they check their email at yahoo.com. Because we have an email monoculture.