Thoughts and Notes Ideas that stay with me long enough to get written down

Email, and the “other Steve Anderson”

It happened again today. Someone signed up for an account, this time at a soccer website, and used my email address.

It's understandable, really. I got lucky. When GMail first started, I got an early invite, and snagged the email address steve.anderson@gmail.com. Due to the way Google does email addressing, I also have steveanderson@gmail.com and steveanderson+anything@gmail.com.

So, if someone says, "Email me at steveanderson16@gmail.com" and the person only hears the steveanderson@gmail.com part of it, I get that email. Same for steveandersen@gmail.com. Same for stevenanderson@gmail.com. You get the idea.

I usually just ignore the emails, but lately I've been trying to get the email to the right person. I mean, if I asked a car dealer for a quote on a car, and that quote got sent to a different Steve Anderson, I'd hope he'd send it on to me. The problem is, how does he know where to send it?

I got lucky the other day. I got an email, not for me, that had a PDF attachment that included the correct email address for the "other Steve Anderson". I sent it on to him and suggested he tell his contacts to update their addresses for him.

That's a bad solution, though. The right solution should be self-service. I should be able to quickly, and easily, forward that email to a service that posts the email in such a way that if the "other Steve Anderson" looks, he can find it. Here's the use case. Follow along and let me know what you think.

I go to a website. It's cool. It's about football. It's about my favorite team, the Minnesota Vikings. I want to write something on the forum, so I sign up for an account. In my excitement, though, I enter the wrong email address. Instead of steveanderson@gmail.com, I enter steveandersen@gmail.com. The Steve Andersen that actually gets email at steveandersen@gmail.com gets the email intended for me. He forwards it to "wrongemail@theothersteveanderson.com". He's done. I look at my email and don't get the activation email I'm expecting. I visit theothersteveanderson.com, see on the "Unclaimed Wrong Emails" list the email I'm expecting. I claim it, activate my account, and move on. Nice, huh?

Now there are all kinds of issues with this idea. What about trolls looking for email address? What about someone claiming all the wrong emails? I don't know how to solve those, but I think the idea has merit.

This sounds like a fun project that one could cobble together using existing technologies. Maybe the right way to do it is via twitter (follow @theothersteveanderson and direct reply to the person that posts). Maybe the right way to do it is via FaceBook. Maybe it's using some kind of web content management system like Magnolia or Drupal. Maybe it could be as simple as having a forum, thread can be opened via email, and anyone that's a member can claim the email by closing the thread.

What do you think? I'd really like some feedback.