Google now lets strangers email you through your Google+ profile:
Google is now letting anyone, strangers included, send emails to your Gmail account through your Google+ profile.People inside and outside of your Google+ profile will be able to send you an email, just by typing the name you use on your profile into the "to" bar, and clicking on you when you appear. The changes were announced in a post on Google's Gmail blog written by product manager David Nachum.
"Have you ever started typing an email to someone only to realise halfway through the draft that you haven't actually exchanged email addresses? If you are nodding your head 'yes' and already have a Google+ profile, then you're in luck, because now it's easier for people using Gmail and Google+ to connect over email.
This, to an extent, could be a really useful tool, but at the same time, the fact that you have to actively opt out of this if you don't want to be contacted by strangers, rather than choosing to opt in, might throw some Gmail and Google+ users, particularly if they're not even really aware of the feature.
Telling people they have to opt out of things, or change the default settings to provide themselves with what they might assume is a basic level of privacy is often considered poor etiquette on behalf of tech companies. A similar debate has arisen around porn filters, which from now will be automatically turned on by broadband providers in the UK, meaning that people will have to actively choose to disable them or use a different security setting.
It's important to stress that your email address won't be visible to anyone unless you email them, and similarly, they will only be able to email once until you reply. Emails from mysterious strangers will also go straight into a separate "social" folder (a bit like Facebook's "other" inbox). As well as turning off the feature altogether, you can choose how different people may communicate with you, depending on whether they're in your circles, extended circles or are complete strangers to you.