Greetings from lovely Tacoma, Washington.

I’ve been in town for a few days and along with making up for lost time with family, I’m visiting some of my favorite haunts. I’ve thus far darkened the doors of 1111, California Burritos (a new to me spot on 6th & Mildred), MSM, and the Red Hot. Last night my niece fried catfish. It was sumptuous. I ate so much I was nervous driving back to our rental, fighting jetlag and postprandial somnolence, a.k.a., that itis.

As in the past, it is my goal to deliver a newsletter once a week during the summer, but it won't be on Sundays because that time belongs to the Matriarch. So here’s the mid-week edition following up on last week’s discussion about Gmail Doppelgängers.

There's this weird thing that happens as an adult. Everyone you know is often struggling with the same problem, but because nobody talks about it, you assume you're the only one.

I remember one particularly warm late summer in the Pacific Northwest, when Hope and I found ourselves losing a war against fruit flies. We tried everything. Apple cider vinegar traps with a dash of dish soap that YouTube swore would work. Cleaning every surface in the kitchen. Taking the trash out obsessively. Nothing seemed to make a dent.

One evening, we were at a party and I started complaining about it. Almost immediately, everyone else joined in. One by one they admitted they were fighting the same battle. It turned out that year had been especially bad for fruit flies across the region. We all thought we were dealing with a uniquely irritating problem, when in reality we were all living through the same malady.

It is the same with Gmail Doppelgängers. Not surprisingly then, this subject set a record for responses. Most were of the “dang bro, me too” variety. But I also got a vote of confidence from several more security/tech minded readers that my privacy set-up is solid and my accounts aren’t compromised. 

From a reader with an Arabic name: “I have the same exact issue. Mine is in Oman. Please tell me if you figure this out, because I have not been able to.” Don’t worry, I got you. Read on. 

Another offered: “I know far too much about a bunch of strangers who are probably distant relatives. Some of them are horrible people, others seem pretty cool.” I wanted more of that story but decided not to probe further.

My favorite story was someone who has an email doppelgänger in hospitality. They kept getting emails related to recent stays: “For a while I was running someone else's B&B in Iceland. That was hilarious. I was like, I am so sorry ma'am I hope the rest of your trip was better than that. Also once I could have co-owned a condo in Canada!” 

A couple of readers talked about how they’ve avoided this problem by using a private email server. So their emails are something like firstname@firstnamelastname.com. If only I had a time machine and understood SMTP & POP3.

My mother-in-law said since I have their physical addresses I should send other(s) Nathan(s) a letter. That’s an incredibly her response.

I noted from one of the more empassioned replies that I should count my blessings that I am firstname.lastname@gmail.com and not firstinitiallastname@gmail.com. Apparently those folks tend to have this problem far, far worse. I only have to deal with my fellow Nathans or Nates. Not the Nicks, Natalies, Nicoles, Nolans, Naomis, Nellys, Nestas, etc.

However, the best reply and the one that put me most at ease is from long-time reader C.C. I am going to quote the middle chunk of their email below:

TL;DR: Nothing shiesty is going on. One of your namesakes just flubbed typing their email address when signing up.

Backstory: I worked at Google as a software engineer for [redacted] years. I was never on account security, but I know folks that were, and my time there instilled a huge level of fear around how easy it is to lose an account. But part of the reason is worth noting here: those teams are serious about their work, they do not mess around. There is an insane amount of traffic constantly trying to steal accounts, and they take their job as defenders quite seriously. They also were always pushing the frontier on good software practices -- there's zero chance someone else managed to register your email address without the dot.

Instead, it's the more mundane explanation you posit in your newsletter: some of your namesakes do not have the appropriate attention to detail, and they straight-up registered their accounts to the wrong damn email address.

This was reassuring. As is often the case, simple explanations are the best. 

Later in the reply C.C. discussed the ways that companies verify (or try to verify) your email when you sign up for a service and after reading his email I will never complain again when a website makes me enter my info multiple times. 

Every site should do that!

So I'm considering this case closed and going forward I'm going to take the advice of another reader, using all older or dummy email for online commerce.  

As an aside, there’s another newsletter to be written about why you should never use that login with your Google or Facebook account button on websites but I’ll hold off on that for now.

Next week I’m likely going to write about accessibility and why the hedges in your front yard may present a hazard for people with limited mobility. 

Until then.