According to Google itself, the free email platform that is Gmail has 2.5 billion active accounts and sees more than 300 billion emails flow through its servers every day. That's a lot of email requiring a lot of security protections and a lot of privacy to protect. What if I were to tell you that your email could be read by a complete stranger if you make just one simple mistake? But it's not just your privacy that is at risk in this scenario, being played out yet again in Gmail support forums, your security could be impacted as well. Here's what you need to know to avoid that facepalm moment that could have serious consequences.

I read the various Gmail support forums, both official and unofficial, on a daily basis. Not because I'm an obsessive geek (OK, well, maybe a little) but rather so as to stay on top of the issues people are having with their email. Time and time again, I see the same problem cropping up, most recently over the weekend on the Gmail subreddit. Under the heading of "Me and this guy share the same email for years now, crazy story" was an account of how someone has been receiving emails meant for someone else to their Gmail address for more than a decade.

The TL;DR is that this user has been getting emails meant for someone else, with a Gmail address exactly the same apart from a dot in the middle. If this sounds familiar, that's because it is. I issued a similar warning over six months ago, based upon my own experience of just this issue. The crazy part of the story is that it's crazy simple to make the mistake causing this and crazy simple to avoid falling into this privacy-busting trap.

Let's be clear here, this is something that can impact any email provider but Gmail gets mentioned most because it's the most popular free service used by a huge number of people. The simplicity in setting up a Gmail account is part of the appeal, but it's also part of the problem. Google has stated over and over that dots don't matter in a Gmail address. If your email is [email protected], you own all the dotted versions of that address: email sent to [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] will all come to you. Some people, it would appear, have this all backwards and seem to think that because they "own" [email protected] that email to [email protected] or [email protected] will also come to them. It won't, it will go to [email protected] or [email protected] instead.

"If anyone tries to create a Gmail account with a dotted version of your username," Google said, "they'll get an error saying the username is already taken." This is true. However, entering a dotted email address whether by mistake or because someone is thinking they are being clever when they are not will result in the privacy-busting outcome that people have been warning of.

The reason for getting someone else's email doesn't really matter; the fact that it has landed in your Gmail inbox does. "The sender probably mistyped or forgot the correct address," Google said, "if someone meant to email [email protected] but typed [email protected], the message went to you because you own [email protected]." In the overall scheme of things, harking back to those 300 billion messages that flow through the Gmail servers daily, such errors will be rare, relatively speaking. Their impact, however, remains the same. Your privacy and security, depending upon the content of the emails in question, can be at risk.

Resolving the issue isn't as easy as it might at first appear. After all, you don't know the actual email address of the Gmail account holder, only the incorrect one. Sending an email to this address will just come straight back, you will be talking to yourself.

Google advises taking the following actions if you are getting email meant for someone else:

At the end of the day, this all comes down to someone entering the wrong address -- be that accidental or malicious in intent. Your Gmail account is still private and secure, and any email sent to any dotted version of your address will only go to you and nobody else. Typos are a fact of life, if you want to ensure your Gmail remains private then double-check every time you enter an email address in a form that you haven't made a potentially very costly one.