[ghaff]

A former employer had a first letter of given name + last name (actually first 5 letters) convention for email addresses. They did have a fallback--usually with second letter of given name. But, of course, a lot of people just automatically emailed the convention with the result that certain email "twins" got misdirected mail.

A very common one at one point was that the CFO shared a first letter of name with his daughter. As I recall, he actually had the email in the usual convention so it's not like his daughter was receiving lots of highly confidential financial info but there was regularly misdirected mail.

[skissane]

> A former employer had a first letter of given name + last name (actually first 5 letters) convention for email addresses

I once heard a story (possibly apocryphal) about a place which used a similar “first initial and truncated surname” convention for usernames, except theirs was first three letters of surname, followed by first initial, followed by some digits. And it all worked great until they hired a guy named Tom Cunningham

[EvanAnderson]

I knew a Steve Penington who broke a user id scheme.

[genewitch]

Bob Matt Derrick once told me of a facility whose maintenance supervisor was named Stuart Pedaso and he nearly had an aneurism from laughter. Secretary there didn't get it.

[skissane]

You know, it took me ages to finally get this… first three letters of first name plus first three letters of surname. Does that mean I’m his login?

(And the last three letters of his surname sound a bit like another word, but adding that to his login as well ruins my dad joke.)

[genewitch]

haha i didn't even think of the "stuped" - his racuous laughter was at "stuped aso"