How to Avoid Getting Other People's Email

A lot of my email is spam, which my Gmail account does a pretty good job of filtering away into my junk messages section. (Recently, it's also been doing a good job of keeping real messages out of the junk box, too.) But an ever-increasing amount of my email is not spam or even bacn but rather messages meant for other people with similar names. For example, I seem to get a lot of business messages meant for a Daniel Goldenberg, whose address is identical to mine save for a period.

What's the best way to deal with this? If you're getting a new address (like the @live.com one's currently up for grabs), keep in mind that simple doesn't necessarily equal better. As Internet Duct Tape points out, not only are you more likely to get email directed towards other folks, but your address is likely to get picked up by bots and automatically added to lots of different newsletters, etc. He suggests getting an email address that is firstnamemiddleinitiallastname@whatver.com

You can also set up an email account from your personal website (you've got one of those, right?) a la john@johnsmith.com, but you'll probably get tons of spam through that site (or at least that's been my experience).

If you're not willing to change your address, just make sure that you get in contact with your email doppelganger as soon as possible to both forward them your mail and so that they can forward you any wayward messages that come their way. And consider setting up a form letter so that you can quickly tell confused emailers that they are actually looking for Daniel, who can be reached with an extra period.