Years ago, when Gmail was still just a baby, I created a couple of accounts. One of them was my main account, the other one was built off of my first initial and last name, to look a little more professional and to be used as such. That second email was, at some point, confused by a group of people as that of their buddy Brian.

Some of the emails sent were your usual (lame) forwards, some were useless information, and some were seriously funny. There were a few "urgent" emails that I'm not sure ever made it to Brian, but most of the emails were sent to several addresses for this "Brian" character. I'm surprised that he never noticed that one of the addresses in the "To:" field of all of these emails wasn't actually his email address.

I've started doing the "right" thing and sending emails to these people telling them that I am not actually Brian. In some cases this has worked, some are still sending me emails, but today I got an email (several actually) from a Mayor in a small town in Connecticut.

This prompted me to create a form email that I can just send off to these people. It's short, and I think it gets the point across.

Subject: Hi. I'm not Brian.

Since I'm starting to use this email account again, and since it keeps getting emails from people that I don't know, I feel it appropriate to point out that this email address never has, and never will, belong to anyone named Brian.

Spread the word. Thanks! 🙂

Also, I'm deleting all these emails, but feel free to doubt that and worry about what may have been sent to this address. 😉

This email was just sent to the Mayor, and to a few other people that are still sending me stuff for Brian. The next step is to email Brian himself, so he can ridicule his friends and colleagues.