Gmail – How did an eBay user add the email address to his account details

access-controlebaygmail

On Gmail, I'm jharrop@gmail.com. Some other guy with an account on eBay has a registered email address there of j.harrop@gmail.com (note the full stop). Gmail is sending his email to me. So maybe nobody is answering the stream of questions about what I am sure is a very nice drum kit.

The answer at How to deal with people sending email incorrectly to my GMail account? confirms Gmail doesn't differentiate between jharrop and j.harrop.

I assume eBay requires users to verify their address when they register.

So I guess what has happened here is that the user subsequently changed his email address in eBay, and there is nothing there to require him to verify the change?

EDIT

In eBay, the "Update your email address" dialog has a confirmation step:

Just one more step!
We have sent an email to your address ...
In the email message from us, click the "Confirm Email" link to confirm your email change.

and the address does not seem to change until you go through the confirm step.

So how did this guy manage to give eBay my gmail address?

Best Answer

These emails are being delivered to the correct user as far as Gmail is concerned.

Gmail is not sending emails to you, rather ebay is sending emails to j.harrop@g... which IS your email account, just as jh.arrop@g... and ever other combination with a . in it would be. All those combinations are tied to just your one account.

I think your question however is really what to do about it?

There are three options:

  1. Nothing
  2. Setup a filter rule in Gmail to bounce email from ebay addressed to j.harrop@gmail.com
  3. Use ebay's password reset to login into that account since you'll get the reset notice (note this is probably illegal as your accessing an account you're not authorized to access).
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