email being used by someone else in the UK

There can not be the same email address used by multiple users. Someone has incorrectly given out your email address or the sender is misspelling the correct email address to your spelling. The email systems are not separate.

I occasionally have a similar issue with my gmail address. The person who keeps doing this to me seems to be located in California, is probably a woman and might be a Democrat voter. (I get a lot of emails asking me to contribute to Democrat election funds.)

I am well aware that one gets spam, that spammers often fake email addresses but in some cases it is clear that someone else has incorrectly used my email address when signing up for a service. Presumably a typo on their part.

Many but not all services when you sign up will send an email asking you to verify you own that email address. This is achieved by sending an email containing an 'activation' link to that email address. This should prevent people signing up using the wrong email address since only the real owner of that email address will be able to activate it.

One can only assume that a lot of systems still don't use this simple security method and immediately activate that email address and hence thereafter you might get 'genuine' emails obviously nothing to do with you.

In some cases one would still be able to unsubscribe from mailing lists. In others like receipts it is not a mailing list but an individual transaction.

The only options left to explore would be

1. Use the 'I forgot my password' method, since you are the person receiving these emails you will receive the password reset email and then be able to login to the account and take further action.
2. Try contacting the organisation in question. At least here in the UK they have a legal obligation to correct such errors.

Unfortunately they will not give you the contact details of the person making the mistake e.g. phone number due to Data Protection rules. I also sadly think they will not be proactive in helping educate the person making the mistake - often repeatedly to stop doing it.

WARNING: Only do this if you're absolutely convinced these are genuine emails and not 'phishing' attacks.

Unfortunately Gmail ignores the dots/underscores/dashes between the name.

bob.smith, bobsmith, bob-smith, bob_smith, all of them are the same @gmail.com address for Google.

This is a known issue with Gmail. I had a friend named with a quite common first/last name who got continuously messages (real, not spam) from people with the same (homonymous) name.

It's unfortunate because you can receive very personal things.

It's the first time I hear a @mac.com address suffering the same issue. Assuming this is the case, Paul Wilson is definitely a combination of common first and last name.

As others have said it is likely a scam or a phishing attempt. The

party is hoping you will respond in some way trying to tell them

of an "error" and will then start requesting real info from you.

The sad fact is that for scammers, it is usually quite easy to get some

email list from somewhere. What makes it worse is sites that require

your email as a user name. If someone hacks into their data base, the

get a treasure trove of email addresses to use or sell even if they aren't

able to get passwords or any other info.

Marco Klobas wrote:

Unfortunately Gmail ignores the dots/underscores/dashes between the name.

bob.smith, bobsmith, bob-smith, bob_smith, all of them are the same @gmail.com address for Google.

This is a known issue with Gmail. I had a friend named with a quite common first/last name who got continuously messages (real, not spam) from people with the same (homonymous) name.

It's unfortunate because you can receive very personal things.

It's the first time I hear a @mac.com address suffering the same issue. Assuming this is the case, Paul Wilson is definitely a combination of common first and last name.

You might want to read Google's instructions regarding usernames.

Not to mention the fact that @mac.com is completely unrelated to Google.

Your problems are most likely due to someone other than you having supplied your email address, either erroneously or otherwise, and (sorry to say it) your name (assuming you're using it—or some variant of it—@mac.com) is not exactly uncommon. You can either ignore those email messages, or send them to junk, or create a Mail Rule to dispatch them.

I get the same problems. I surmise anyone with a fairly common name will.

We've seen various examples of this: in some cases it appears that the perpetrator decides, somehow, that they own that email address - I've no idea of the mental processes (if any) behind this - and start using it with various online sign-ins. Then, as here, the actual owner of the address get showered with the responses. It's usually not a scam, just rampant stupidity. If you are also receiving wanted emails at that address it's difficult to separate them - you'd have to set up a rule for each address sending you an unwanted response.

As most of these may not actually have a physical address there's no way they can contact the perpetrator to tell them to stop it. It's a very irritating situation for those unlucky enough to get involved in it. I can attest to the usefulness of having an ununsual (and I think probably unique) name.

It is likely just a scam. Anyone can fake an email address.

Ignore them.

Thanks for the link.

Edit... meant to reply to the OP.