If you're getting confirmation emails for an email address that is similar to yours, or you've received an unexpected transfer, the answer may be more innocent than a phishing email or spam.
How Gmail's dot rules work
Gmail works in a way where you have one account that can be linked to several variants of the same email address. For example, if 'johnsmith@gmail.com' is the actual account holder, anyone entering the email with a . in any other place will still direct to the inbox of johnsmith@gmail.com:
- john.smith@gmail.com
- j.ohn.smith@gmail.com
- johns.mith@googlemail.com
What may have happened
The sender of the transfer may have accidentally typed a variant of your own email address instead of their own. Perhaps their email was jon.smith42@gmail.com but they missed the '42', and now you received the transfer instead.
There's little we can do to prevent this, as we don't know if someone has entered a typo — but we can look into specific cases for you. This does not mean they are transferring your files or have any access to your email account.