[ethbr1]

Exactly. The dots are useful from a UX perspective, as it makes "incorrectly addressed" email more obvious.

I've spent way too much time thinking about this.

Well, specifically about the kind of person who would use an email address they don't own to (a) buy a house, (b) apply for a FL sheriff's job, (c) conduct financial transactions, etc. (all actual examples I've received).

You think you have a bead on how ignorant people are, and then you realize there's a long tail you weren't aware of...

[jeroenhd]

I think there's also a distinct possibility that the senders just have the wrong email address, especially when it contains a name.

You could own [e-mail] but someone you only occasionally do business with might have accidentally put down [e-mail] when you first met. Emails back and forth will work (because they can reply to your emails) but when they try to send you email, someone else will receive it.

This can also go unnoticed (i.e. when someone sends an email stating "when are you sending the documents?" -> "I already did, maybe they ended up in spam, here you have them again"). People probably won't notice unless the unintended recipient tells the sender that they got the email address wrong. I imagine that might happen a few times, but after a few years of other people using your email address, you'd stop bothering.

[ethbr1]

I generally try and reply with "This email address isn't owned by the person you're trying to reach. Please reach out to them and reconfirm what email they want you to use."

Responses have been pretty bizarre though. I usually get what amounts to an "Okay".

I would have expected some sort of "Could you please delete those sensitive documents we sent you?" at minimum.

Also bizarre... I don't have a very common name or email address for my main Gmail.

I can only imagine what [e-mail] has to deal with.

From a solution / feature perspective, it'd be nice to have a auto-response + trash on anything other than allowlisted dots and plusses. Maybe Gmail supports this? The worst offenders finally got the picture, so I didn't dig into it.

[jeroenhd]

Gmail does support conditional auto replies and filters. You could probably filter out most typos if you stick to your own format for every website and contact you have.