Gmail security

I use Google mail, before you say it, yes I know ads, worries about personal data I, is it secure?  But I do, not least because I created it at the same time as my Google talk account which I use a lot. Besides, the issues with privacy and Google being 'careful' with my data are just scaremongering, right?

I get junk...in my Gmail, again not surprising or unexpected...but it get a lot of junk and I mean a lot and I don’t pass my address out, as I said I use it for Google talk.

So I read some of it.......

Who the hell is Joe Morse? And why am I getting their personal email?

After some investigation discovered that Google have a weird little feature in Gmail which ignores the full stop "."(See the help article here) in your email address, so j.morse and jmorse are, according to them, the same address!

Now Joe shops, I know this because I can (if I desire to) see where they shop, I found notifications of job interviews, holiday bookings etc, all of which I have deleted from my inbox

Wait there’s more..

Who’s Jessica Morse? With the same email address?...and Josh?

There now seems to be three people using j.morse@gmail.com? All coming to me!@ jmorse@gmail.com.

I have forwarded emails to the other users suggesting they use another email account for such notifications I leave it up to you what you decide to do

/john