the allies

Somewhere on Gmail, I remember reading that if someone addresses an email to you and messes up by leaving out a dot or underscore, or doesn't put the dot where it's supposed to be, that it will forward that email to addresses that are close to it so you are sure to get it anyway. Did I make sense?

An example:
Someone's email address is johndoe@gmail.com. However, someone tried to send an email to john.doe@gmail.com.
So Gmail, being the good delivery people they are, sent that email to johndoe@gmail.com so that person is sure to get the email.

About two years ago, I started receiving emails from someone, asking me to write news stories in the Salt Lake area. They usually asked me to go to big events in downtown for a story and report on it, or interview some random person. 


The first few emails I received really confused me. I was looking for a job at the time and remember applying as a freelance writer for someone. I didn't hear back from them, but then I started getting all these emails asking me to write news stories, so I thought that they had actually hired me and didn't tell me. I didn't respond to any of the emails because I hadn't met or talked to any of these people, so I thought it could have been a scam. After the third or fourth email, I started writing a response telling them how confused I was, but that I would happily write their stories if they would like to meet me first and find out if they are legitimate. When I was about to click send, I looked at the original email and saw that they had addressed their email to allie.jeppson@gmail.com. Just one dot away from mine.

Then a lightbulb went off in my head- There is another Allie Jeppson in the Salt Lake area who is a news writer, and I was getting her emails. Sometimes they call her Alexandra, but she must usually go by Allie.

Most recently, I got one from some guy named Rhett who asked me to go to the Kansas concert in Logan, and then do a phone interview with the band. I was really tempted to reply and get some tickets and their phone number. If they asked if I was Allie Jeppson, I could say that yes, I am. Now give me some freaking free Kansas tickets.

EDIT: My brother corrected me to say that the dot does not make a difference. He said, "You are the owner of all combinations of your email with periods. No one has the same email as you with different periods." So, I guess the sender of emails I get just plain have the wrong address. Luckily, I always see the emails addressed to both my email and another one, so the real Allie Jeppson must be getting the emails, too.