waterat 20911 Report post Posted December 10, 2014 Started to send a gmail message to someone and when I typed the first letter of their address gmail suggested an auto-fill of a name I had never communicated with AND it was associated with the e-mail address of a lady I had seen previously. The name has never been associated with the lady (at least on this site) nor does it appear through a quick search of other sites. Could it be that gmail has mined other info from the email account and linked the name to it? I've emailed the lady to ask/caution her about what happened but haven't heard back. She is very well established and has email as her primary contact method so this could be a royal pain in the ass to say nothing of being indiscreet.... Suggestions? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
KenB71 273 Report post Posted December 10, 2014 I actually have the same issue with my Gmail. I was never able to figure it out. I can't delete this entry. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
MellyBelly 15058 Report post Posted December 10, 2014 Not sure if this is the same thing you're talking about, but I had an issue also. I was emailing a certain lady back and forth and she suddenly replied to me with my name. I was shocked and checked our chat and found I had never stated it. So what I found after some poking around was that in the account settings the account could be given a name. I never did this when I set up account originally, so I assume it automatically took the name of the computer. I changed it and now my real name does not show up anywhere. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bcguy42 38594 Report post Posted December 10, 2014 Is there any possibility you (the OP) have the person in question included in your contact list somewhere? Gmail will "suggest" based on your contacts. Keep in mind, Google considers everywhere to be here (or vice versa) and if you included the information on one device but not another, Gmail may still see it. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest D***el B***e Report post Posted December 10, 2014 Oh my, this doesn't sound good ... What's the phrase again? Big brother is watching you. I don't have a gmail account and only sync very few items between my devices. I bought my own domain name and use the hosting company's mail servers. I get paranoid when weird things like this happen and will tend to investigate until I'm blue in the face. I love technology but I also hate technology. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nntsci 11076 Report post Posted December 10, 2014 if you are sending to a gmail account, gmail will know that peron's g+ account. gmail knows everything!!! I was in correspondence with a woman and a picture of her came up with her messages. I eventually found out that she had a youtube channel that was linked to her gmail and that picture was from her youtube stream. Last year I was looking through an old email from a person who I hadn't talked to in a few months and it had a picture of her on the old email... I knew that my hotmail account had a picture from my facebook profile so I searched and found out that it was her Facebook profile picture that was being imported from her Facebook account... so I found out that she had Facebook account. Her profile picture no longer shows up on Hotmail I think because she changed her privacy settings. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Meaghan McLeod 179664 Report post Posted December 10, 2014 Are there any good email accounts that DOES NOT do this crap? I'm seriously considering scrapping my Gmail account. Too creepy in my opinion. 2 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest D***el B***e Report post Posted December 10, 2014 You may want to try "myway.com". It's a general purpose portal that offers webmail. I'm not saying it's the best but it's an option. I have my hobbyist account there and no issues to date. tTere's no ads, no banners, no tracking (that I was able to figure out). Web interface is so-so, but you can't have everything I guess. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
waterat 20911 Report post Posted December 10, 2014 I don't think my name has been associated with my gmail but the lady was using a different email service hence why I am concerned that gmail has mined the data associated with her email service acct. Still haven't heard back from her and while I can ensure absolute discretion the longer she is unaware of this (if indeed it is a concern - may actually be a 'work' name she has chosen to use - although I would have expected the name to show up through a simple search) the more likely it is to cause her a problem. What showed up (I've bolded the letters that were common in the accounts) was: Firstname Lastname <l[email protected]> 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nntsci 11076 Report post Posted January 22, 2015 Are there any good email accounts that DOES NOT do this crap? I'm seriously considering scrapping my Gmail account. Too creepy in my opinion. yes... any account will do it if you use the wrong name from the start... So I set up a gmail account under the same of Sam Riley, and that was the only name that was ever associated with that account. The key is to have the alias as the only name used for that account. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
FunAdventures 4501 Report post Posted January 25, 2015 (edited) yes... any account will do it if you use the wrong name from the start... So I set up a gmail account under the same of Sam Riley, and that was the only name that was ever associated with that account. The key is to have the alias as the only name used for that account. I agree. I was once emailing someone back and forth, and his name kept switching from his 'real' email address and his 'alias' email account also in gmail. From what I understand Gmail allows you to have multiple email accounts under the same Google + profile. This can be dangerous in my opinion. I used to have a Google + account with my real name, but deleted it and replaced it so it's only linked to this persona. My other personal email is through a non-related provider, and as far as I am aware, this is working at keeping things separate. PLEASE advise me if I am wrong! I would much rather someone tell me that my emails are including signature information that is not supposed to be there. I sometimes wonder when I reply through my phone app if there is a signature like "Sent from XXXX's phone". I've seen this sort of signature attached to emails sent from tablets. Additional Comments: Ha! P*rovider was replaced with escort. Edited January 25, 2015 by FunAdventures Deleted second quote 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites