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My Gmail setting has forever been set to send emails with just my Gmail address as the identifier, so it should not send out my account name (first & last names), or so I thought!

Recently I got a reply from someone and they addressed me by my account name in their response. How could this happen? Did they somehow hack my email to find out my name? (I was using Gmail app on iPad.)

After this happened, I checked my Gmail setting, and my name was not displayed anywhere in it.

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What you see in the To field when you receive an email is the way your contact has you in their address book. So if you send your emails just from [email protected], but your contacts have you saved as John Doe in their address book, when you receive an email from them, you will see yourself as John Doe <[email protected]>.

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  • Thanks. My name is not in the To field in the email from the person. And I never disclosed my name ever so i have no idea why he knows... you can't guess my name from my email address, either.
    – Papillon
    Jan 27, 2015 at 9:03
  • Did the respective contact sent you the reply from a Yahoo email address?
    – Alex
    Jan 27, 2015 at 9:43
  • No, from their company email address.
    – Papillon
    Jan 27, 2015 at 9:56
  • Well, I don’t think it’s a Gmail problem. It might be that in their global address book they have your name somehow.
    – Alex
    Jan 27, 2015 at 10:02

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