The will the Real Cole Cooper please stand up?
A Googley e-mail issue
colecoop@gmail.com - cole.cooper@ gmail.com and colecooper@gmail.com
I ended up with my name in gmail as cole.cooper@gmail.com. Using that account, I set up this blog and my Google+ services, and my Google Plus page.
And there the fun begins. Back in 2004 there were not many Cole Coopers on the internet. It was a fairly uncommon name. There are a lot more now. There is a football player Cole Cooper on Twitter at @coopball, There is even a Marvel Cole Cooper character at the Daily Bugle. Facebook pages, and a colecooper.com Which is fine - I don't mind, they seem to have the right guy on their email addresses and I'm not vain enough to think my name is exclusive.
What I do mind is the silly email problems having a common name like this gives me on gmail. When companies take down the email address for some folks they get it wrong. Since I was the first Cole Cooper on Gmail - the three addresses you see at the top of the page come into my mailbox. So I get mail not intended for me.
Today, as an example - I got the sign in Instructions for a Allstate account for a Cole Cooper in the US - all the stuff I needed to hack into his account. So I phoned the insurance company and told them to send the material to the right guy. What they had done is put the name without checking to see if they had the right email address and found there was an 88 missing from the address. Now if I was a less than honest person, that would be a good way to me to steal an identity.
So Folks - be careful out there - make sure that your addresses are accurate - and to the one Cole Cooper out there who insists on signing up for School using the cole.cooper@gmail.com address - tell your school your correct gmail address. I'm not going to do your homework for you.
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