[Eighth]

I think it's more talking about gmail purchase records, which can be viewed here: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/category%3Apurchase...

[comeonseriously]

Interesting.

So, my gmail is [e-mail]. I see SOMEONE else's purchase in my history. That persons name is shown as fname [e-mail]. Same as mine except .i. is three spaces.

WTF? Does Google have a bug here? Is there an actual real life human I could send this to?

Edit: the only purchase I see of mine are for Apps I bought from the play store. These don't show up in the link that the Googler posted above.

[denton-scratch]

Isn't it sad that a company that totally dominates modern email, plays so fast and loose with email standards?

And not just obscure standards; email addresses are very much public-facing elements of email. The expectation when you register an email address is that that address is now uniquely associated with you. The public does not expect that an email might be delivered to other inboxes than their own.

Why does gmail elide dots again? There must be some reason why a big email provider would deviate so egregiously from the conventions all other email services comply with.

/me not a gmail user, except for certain account recovery purposes.

[ahzhou]

Sounds like a security flaw. I’d submit it to a big bounty program.

[listmaking]

The link above, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/category%3Apurchase... is just a search of your Gmail inbox for "category:purchases". You get exactly the same results by opening Gmail and entering "category:purchases" in the search box. Each of the results is an email that was delivered to your Gmail address, i.e. an email actually in your Gmail inbox or archive. So if you're saying you're seeing someone else's purchases, it means email meant for them was delivered to you (and you didn't notice it at the time for some reason). You can click through to each individual email to see when it was sent and by whom etc. So if it's a bug, it's a bug with Gmail delivery itself; it's not a bug with the purchase categorization specifically.

[Spooky23]

It’s not a security issue. It’s a user confusion and poor validation issue.

I was an early GMail user and have a common-ish name. I probably get 30-50 emails a month from confused people ranging from contracts to receipts to racy photos.

[sixothree]

I used to get alert emails, from google, for what appeared to be someone with my email address in another tld. I probably could have reset their password and accessed everything. Maybe they can access my email.

I sought support but never got anything official and commenters brushed it off. But I'm pretty sure it was similar to your issue.

[eldaisfish]

i think this is a case of gmail ignoring periods in your email address and applying the same rule elsewhere.

As an example name.lastname, na.melastname and namelast.name are all the same email address.

[floatingatoll]

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, there is no UI for removing this category when it's incorrect or when I wish to opt out.

Ironically, since the only purchases my Gmail contains receipts for are for someone who isn't me but apparently decided to use my email address, whatever database these are feeding that Google thinks is "about me" is steadily being corrupted to death by a complete stranger.

Oh well :)

[kevin_thibedeau]

> Oh well :)

Not going to be so great when they engage in criminal activity that points back to you. I do a password reset on their account whenever I find someone using my email. Then you can change the email to a throwaway or delete the account. It's unsafe to let it be.

[potatoman22]

It's pretty deceptive that they don't disclose these are categorized and stored for advertising purposes. That's unethical IMO.

[eth0up]

On the About Gmail page, in large bold text is stated:

"We never use your Gmail content for any ads purposes" emphasis mine.

That might qualify as deceptive.