Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Someone Else Is Using My Email Address
periklisv writes:
I daily receive emails from adult dating sites, loan services, government agencies, online retailers etc, all of them either asking me to verify my account, or, even worse, having signed me up to their service (especially dating sites), which makes me really uncomfortable, my being a married man with children... I was one of the early lucky people that registered a gmail address using my lastname@gmail.com. This has proven pretty convenient over the years, as it's simple and short, which makes it easy to communicate over the phone, write down on applications etc. However, over the past six months, some dude in Australia (I live in the EU) who happens to have the same last name as myself is using it to sign up to all sorts of services...
I tried to locate the person on Facebook, Twitter etc and contacted a few that seemed to match, but I never got a response. So the question is, how do you cope with such a case, especially nowadays that sites seem to ignore the email verification for signups?
Leave your best answers in the comments. What would you do if someone else started giving out your email address?
I tried to locate the person on Facebook, Twitter etc and contacted a few that seemed to match, but I never got a response. So the question is, how do you cope with such a case, especially nowadays that sites seem to ignore the email verification for signups?
Leave your best answers in the comments. What would you do if someone else started giving out your email address?
When you find you have been signed up for a legit company site. Go to the site using your email and press the forgot password on the site. When you get the email back, log on and maybe you can get the information that you need to track him down.
Long answer: Try and find a contact for this person and tell them to fuck off?
It will lock out the imposter.
happens all the time, most likely doing it to get you to ditch the address because they wanted it or possibly a friend being a dick or an enemy getting even. All possible, email really is open to easy targeting and exploitation in this way.
Struth! Yeah sorry matey I'll lift my game and turn it up. All good aye. Cheers fella.
I live in Paraguay. I got into Gmail back when it was invite-only and I was able to select the precise handle I wanted. Some years later I began to receive mail from a dude who apparently lives in Spain. Seems like the dude registered as his handle the exact word I used, only that he inserted a period. Looks like a period (.) is approved as a different handle but is treated as the same. Thankfully I have no lost incoming emails (apparently), but I also get all kinds of mail directed to such person. Baffling, indeed. Hope Google can solve this.
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
The problem is that there are so many people that just a typo will do it. This is why big email aggregators are a bad idea (there are reasons why they are a good idea, of course, or they wouldn't exist, but this is one of the reasons why they aren't).
Unfortunately there is no way to prevent these--there's no test that will reveal them as errors.
https://www.xkcd.com/1279/
That's the best advice I can give. You aren't a user, you are a metric on a free service. Security is secondary to these providers. Instead, choose one from this list and always remember, you get what you pay for.
P.S. I'm not associated with them in any professional capacity, but I can't recommend Runbox highly enough.
People signing up for services with someone else's email address is a behavior that has always confused the hell out of me. It's happened to me as well, and I don't think there's anything you can do to _prevent_ it. My suggestion is to make sure your email address password is changed on the regular; co-opt the services you'd care to use; and for the rest, switch the passwords to some 50-odd random string of characters.
Forgot password, login, change password, disable email notifications done. Or block as spam. Or ignore them. So many choices.
If this person has used your e-mail for his sign-ups, it should be possible for you to take over their accounts by doing password reset.
Do so.
Change the passwords and lock them out.
Shut off any functionality that annoys you, or that costs them money, but try to leave the account intact so they can't re-acquire it.
They'll be forced to re-acquire the account with an e-mail they actually control, at which point perhaps they'll stop accidentally hassling you.
Of course, have a talk with your spouse before doing this, you don't want to create drama at home.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Treat it as a gift. They have just given you an account for whatever service it is. If they sign up with a credit card, even better. Just reset the password and go to town. Clearly by using your email address they intended for you to have the account.
Contact the various sites that he signed up with, and see if they will tell you what IP address was used when he signed up. Find out which ISP he is using from the IP address. Get the subscriber info from the ISP using whatever legal means you can.
https://www.xkcd.com/1279/
Get a Protonmail account.
I have the same problem. My most common three were dating sites, some kid emailing his school work from his ipad (surely he's noticed it never turns up unless he's just sending it to a random email to save it in his sent items?!?!), and some idiot's xbox live account. The worst organisation I've had to deal with was Microsoft as some guy registered his xbox live account to my gmail address. Despite going through the hoops and process and Microsoft support they wouldn't do anything as I wasn't the account holder, at least with the dating sites I was able to a password reset and then delete their account, but when I eventually gave in after 3 months of chasing Microsoft support down the rabbit hole I tried the same with the Microsoft account, but got stopped by not being able to answer the security questions. *sigh*
Quite how someone can be smart enough to set up all that security on their account but not able to type their own damn email address I'll never know.
Four administrations now, and the Secret Service hasn't called me yet.
I got into gmail pretty early and got firstnamelastname@gmail.com.
To be honest I don't really use the account as i found I was too entrenched in my existing email address to switch but occasionally whenever I look at the account some dude in Australia is using it for all kinds of signups.
I wonder if it's a thing. If a store or something asks you for your email address and they already know your name. Just give them a fake email.
It's gmail. Just report it as spam. Problem solved.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I had this guy who thought my ancient [first initial][lastname] email address was his own. He was using it for various things, including signing up for his new credit card. Apparently, his credit card company did not valid an email address before it started sending reward statements, which included a partial card number. The credit card company did NOT provide an unsubscribe feature (unless I logged into the other customer's account which, of course, was not possible). Actually, there was no mechanism for me NOT to get his reward statements!
After escalating to the credit card company's executive customer service (the customer service of last resort when you write to the company's CEO) , they evidently got ahold of the guy to inform him that this email address is bad, and to get his real one.
My recent problems with someone else trying to use my email address have since stopped.
Get a new one.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
There's not much you can do to stop it really.
Sorry, that's the way email works.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
I've had similar problems. One thing you can do is to create filters to send emails from those sites you don't use directly to trash. Or unsubscribe if you get repeated emails from a mailing list. With a little work, you should be able to clean up your inbox.
I'd also take measures to make sure he can't log into your Gmail account. Change your password to something very strong and turn on two-factor authentication.
I have recently begun having the same problem. Asian dating sites, Russian bride offers, my spam count has been through the roof. I have even received emails from companies responding to job applications from people who are probably eagerly waiting for employment. I'm guessing the dating sites are using emails exposed by data breaches and the employment offers and more personal emails are a result of typos.
Since you're using Gmail, just mark the unwanted email as spam and, in some cases, Google offers to unsubscribe the email address from the mailing list on your behalf. Fortunately, Gmail has a fantastic spam filter.
I live in Australia and have a name common in the U.K. Some English teenager set his snapchat recovery email to my email address. (Firstname.Lastname@gmail.com).
When I received a password reset I got into his account and I fired up conversations with all the girls on there telling them how I've always desired them and want to have hot steamy sex with them.
One responded with "hey I'm your sister!!" I replied "Game of Thrones. Let's do this"
Fun times.
I have had the same this. Mostly you ignore it, but some places send constant emails, ignoring the verification step (Facebook and some dating site were the worst).
For honest mistakes, I sometimes respond (had information on a wedding sent to me, so I let the emailer know so they could inform the correct person).
For bad places like that send tons of email, I use the "I lost my password function" to get the password, sign into the account they created, and change the email and password both to something completely random.
I have a common first.last@gmail.com. Mostly they are typos; several of my dim-witted namesakes forgot either a number or middle initial when sharing their email address. The one really peculiar one though comes from Nigeria... this being odd since I have a very Irish name... and he doesn't.
But, I do get a kick hearing about the old rugby team meeting up, other people's family news, my gay namesake's dating issues, and other such joys. So, unless you are in Nigeria trying to use an Irish name, please keep it up; it makes for interesting entertainment, especially when in Gaelic.
Like the submitter, I got into gmail pretty early - and while it's not my main address anymore, I still have it forwarding. My gmail address is my first initial plus my somewhat uncommon last name (which - and I hate to break it to you - is not "Wagon").
Anyway, there seems to be two different people who think it's their address... both of whom share my first initial and last name. One is a kid who kept signing up for Facebook with it, which was annoying (since Facebook actually lets you operate an account even if you don't answer the verification email) but eventually got solved after four or five iterations. The other seems to be an older guy from West Virginia or thereabouts. I've gotten house renovation quotes, emails from his lawyers regarding significant purchases, and all sorts of other minutiae which would likely make it easy for me to steal his identity, if I so chose. I ignored it for a while; but eventually I started sending emails back saying variations of "this guy apparently does not know how to use email, but in any case this is not his address". It actually stopped for a while after I replied all to an email his lawyer sent to both him and his wife... but the apparently senile old codger has forgotten again.
#DeleteChrome
In the old days, we would put a friends phone number and or address in the cardboard box for free cruise or gym membership. Today if some guy spams a forum with dumb questions and makes his email public, he gets signed up for tinder and grindr. So maybe someone or somewhere that has your email os trolling you.
Or you just have a simple name like jones, and it is a fast way for someone to make up an email address to sign up for things.
I reserved my last name @gmail.com and a funny thing happened... my niece (who lives in another state and I only talk to now and again) was stoned and ordered a pizza and forgot to include the first letter of her first name as part of the email, so I got the delivery receipt... I called them and it totally freaked them out and was super hilarious.
Anyway to OP, not much you can do other than change your email address or try to locate the person on Facebook, or call the companies emailing you and explain the situation and try to get contact info.
Make sure you change you password and turn on two-factor authentication. Check your account information, changing any security questions. Flag all the odd mail as spam.
Back in '97 I registered a personal domain [firstname][lastname].com and I have a very common Anglo name.
Email address is [firstname]@[firstname][lastname].com
There's a real estate agent in Florida who's been happily giving out my email address to clients, lawyers, banks etc for a decade now.
I've had very personal information emailed to me, bank loan applications etc.
I even had one person start an email fight with me, refusing to believe I wasn't who they thought I was, which I ended by point them at the "whois" ownership record of my domain.
There's nothing I can do about it, nor can you. Just delete the emails that come in and filter. Or create a new email account.
The year before I registered my email address I had been using [lastname].freeserve.co.uk which was the UK's first large scale ISP.
I had some idiot email me a plan to rob their local supermarket which I passed on to the authorities...
Wasn't me. Now, if your email address had been noway@inhell.com, then I would be apologizing profusely. :D
This space unintentionally left blank.
I also have a firstlast@gmail.com and have the same issue.
I haave gotten his insurance coverage estimates, a welcome to your new job for his wife and various other things.
He and/or she or whoever is entering the email into the system seem to forget to add the initial between the first name and last name.
I know know what his address is so immediately send people to that when it appears to be his, once in a while I do get random sign-ups for things he likely did.
They don't use that much on the internet so I don't get that many, it sounds like your person is worse.
The dating sites, Uber, etc., are signing you up from a list of email addresses that have been harvested. If for some stupid reason you log in, they don't have to show you any ToS because they can claim you already saw it "when you signed up." The dating sites will attempt to bill you, and Uber ... it's Uber, so what do you expect except sleaze?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
This happened to me many years back. I had managed to get commonnickname.middleinitial.lastname@gmail.com, intending to use it for "professional" purposes. My name, however, is highly common (even including the middle initial), and after having it for about a year I started getting sign-ups and order confirmations that were obviously not for me.
At first, I ignored it. I figure there was a letter difference, or the other guy wanted meant to use @yahoo.com. After a few confirmation e-mails went unanswered, surely he would realize the problem? But he didn't. And then I started getting personal correspondence, as if he was giving it to acquaintances. I replied to two or three, and those did seem to stop, but the sign-ups and orders didn't. I started reporting them to the respective sites, hoping that if stuff stopped showing up he might get the hint, but it never did.
Finally, I got fed up with it, and after yet another order confirmation I used my e-mail address to reset the password for his account, log into it, and get his physical address. Then I typed up a stern-yet-polite message to him to stop using my @)*(*$%&*)@*( e-mail address! One stamp and off it went.
I think that must have done the trick, because the rate started to decrease, but not long after I just got my own domain name and use that now, instead. The gmail account has probably lapsed since. In hindsight, I probably could have gotten in trouble if he was the vengeful type, but I suspected him to be an older guy with only a passing understanding of the internet in general.
Obviously the charge for postage from EU to AUS will be quite a bit higher than my 30 cents I spent at the time. In the meantime, you might make use of the modifier: gmail allows you to use username+modifier@gmail.com (e.g. tukaro+slashdot@), and with various websites you can use a common modifier and set up a filter to deem it "legitimate". Everything else can be shunted to a quasi-spam folder, which will be easier to sort through.
You may also report the sign-ups as being invalid. Most websites I contacted said they would close the account in question (one music site misinterpreted my notice as a claim of fraud), and if a physical letter doesn't work (or you want to use that as a last resort) this may correct the habit.
1. reply to their business emails telling the sender to fuck off.
2. password reset on any accounts, then either fuck with them or cancel them.
I cancelled some guys holiday once. Hope he learnt his lesson.
Are you x@x.org?
I've used that one a billion times.
Friend of mine once had this happen to her, but she was lucky in that several of the emails were for eCommerce and they included a shipping address. She very nicety typed up a nice letter and snail mailed it to that address explaining his mistake. Also in the letter was terms if he wished to continue to use her email address she would be charging a $20 (US) fee per email to cancel whatever services were being done through it and payment would be due 1 week from sending out her invoice to him. With 100% interest compounded daily for any invoices not paid in 7 days. She got 1 bad email after that was sent.
John
Junk mail their ass into your spam folder. If you're that "uncomfortable" just sign up for a different email address.
Honestly though, why does it matter to you? I've had the same email address for longer than you. I get tons of spam but the filters are great and rarely does one get through. It doesn't matter to me one bit. And if one does? Why should I be frightened of that? It's just an email.
Maybe the problem is you, and your fear of getting embarrassed. If you're that uptight there's nothing you can do I guess.
My last name is Smith and I also was an early gmail adopter, so my email is of the form xysmith@gmail.com where x is my first initial, y my middle. I get email for about a dozen different folks, most of whom have an email of the form xysmith#@gmail.com where they are numbers 1-13. I get to know them, and where I can, redirect email to them.
One of them lives in the UK and does assessments of independent schools. I recognize his emails because they're work related, and now that I know his company name and work address, I can recognize the emails from his motorcycle insurer. When I know they're his, I forward the email. He and I get along well because my redirection of email means more business for him.
Another is an alumnus of Drexel University. I send her all the email related to the Drexel alumni group.
Treat it as a way to get to know folks you otherwise would not. My spouse is pretty comfortable with the fact that I'm not one guy signing up for simultaneous dating groups in Alabama, NYC, and Thailand.
You'll be OK.
I was also one of the lucky ones all the way down to the space that was shortly removed. Each time someone tries to come in as me in any way I'm asked if it's ok, which I refuse, Be it XXX897@gmail or any similar form of my email address
I've had the exact same problem over the last two years
Has been happening to me for years. Google refuses to do anything. I once got a copy of a girl's college application that included her social security number. Even then they refused to even acknowledge my complaint. Perhaps it is time for a class action suit against Google.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
What if you:
- connect to the service,
- say you have lost your password
- get a new one sent to the mail address ( that is still yours, if I understand)
- and thus block the access for the other guy
Some guy in America keeps resetting my password and I can't get to my adult dating sites anymore!
Actually, I have experienced this same scenario with two different individuals - one in Europe and one in Australia. The former is a result of them signing up for the european version of gmail (google.com). I don't think they get my email. But, I get mail intended for them. I've closed quite a few shopping accounts that she opened up. Heck, if I were in London, I could have picked up packages she had waiting because I had the credentials and the stuff was prepaid.
The one in Australia is a different sort. I think I pissed him off. He registered my email address with a many different spammers using an alias. They don't often acknowledge the "unsubscribe" request or just give you a big FU. That shit can be hard to filter with gmail unless they use the same pattern. Thankfully, that was the case and now it goes to trash by default.
It's an old ploy and many open it to view the "fluke", opening it verifies it as being real and anything can happen after that.
I got into gmail early, so I have my real name. I have a really basic, boring-ass name. When the first person with the same real name as me assumed that my address is in fact theirs, I did a little work to try and track them down to set things straight. Using only the information in emails, it was easy enough to track their activity to two zip codes, presumably their work and home. Now all I have to do is give them a ring, and have a friendly name-sharing-bros conversation, right?
Wrong.
It turns out there are over 100 people in that city alone that share my full name. I'm not gonna go through the phone book calling all of them.
Then I tried replying to the people sending this person messages at my address. "Hey, do you know X IRL? Please tell them that this is not their email address."
It didn't work. The flow of email continued, and not just throwaway site registrations either. Loads of sensitive personal and business related documents. If I was both stupid and evil, I could do a lot of stupid evil shit with this.
Then other people with the same name (we are legion) started using it. I've lost count at this point. This is not a war you can win.
Don't give in to temptation. Looking at a computer the wrong way is OMGILLEGALHAX these days. You might get a laugh out of fucking with them, but remember: this email address is easily traceable to your real life identity. You could get fucked rather badly by the legal system in return.
My plan now is to get my own domain and move off gmail. Yes, it's time and money, but on the plus side, it will be one fewer egg in the google basket.
Or, put their name and number in various public bathroom stalls..."Call XYZ at XXX-xxx-xxx, anon sex M4M" or such. Another great one was to call the CoLDS 800 number, pretend to be the victim...give them this sob story about getting my girlfriend pregnant, thinking about killing myself, telling them to not call me because I don't want my parents to know, but if they could come over and ask for me I NEED to talk to them, can Jesus help me, etc. Tell them the victim's parents names too, so it's SUPER creepy when they show up and seem to already know the people living there. Oh, what fun we had in high school.
Had a young woman open a Pinterest account with my unusual email address. I can't figure out how she would have ever pulled it out of thin air making it up. Clicked the "forgot my password" link on the web site, changed it, then closed and deleted the account.
Have my own domain, so I don't have to borrow an email address off someone else.
I have [firstname]@[myslashdotusername].com. My domain name is now 18 years old and, outside of certain administrative addresses like postmaster@, abuse@, etc. (all of which forward to my address), mine is the only email address that has ever existed on the domain.
Even so, I occasionally get seemingly-legitimate people entering my address for things like an appointment at an Apple Store to get their iDevice repaired and for other purposes. Fortunately not as much as the original poster, but it does happen on occasion. I usually end up canceling the appointments and whatnot just so they stop. Very odd, as they have very different names than I.
Also annoying: somehow my email address has gotten around as someone in Dubai who is a position to offer employment, so I get tons of unsolicited CVs and cookie-cutter job applications from people living in Dubai. When asked, they say they received my email address at a job fair, trade show, etc. I've not yet had the pleasure of visiting the UAE, so I have no idea how my email has gotten around in those circles. Somehow it's also been picked up by those offering real estate and other services in the UAE, so I get a bunch of spam relating to that. Very odd.
I also have [myslashdotusername]@ and [myslashdotusername1]@gmail.com, and have had them since Gmail first started (both were invite accounts). I mostly got them to reserve the name and, later, for other Google services like YouTube and Google Voice. I occasionally get some guy in Australia, oddly enough, who has [myslashdotusername01]@gmail.com, but either he or the people he correspond with omit the digit 0 and I get his mail. I contacted him through other means (one of the emails "he" received included his phone number) and he is more careful now, but there's occasional screw-ups. Since I don't use the email address for email, I have an auto-responder set saying "If you're trying to reach [guy] in Australia, you have the wrong address."
Both office 365 and Google's gsuite support it and include DNS records you can add with a key identifer to verify the domain attached with the IP address is you. More information is here
http://www.dkim.org/
SPF also is pretty standard which helps but black hats have gotten work arounds.
If you own your exchange server you need to let your system administrator add the proper DNS records and turn it on in the Exchange Admin center
http://saveie6.com/
If enough people suffering from your problem do it, Gmail will learn to block e-mails from their senders outright. (If they don't want them blocked like that, they should have used e-mail verification). At the very least, reporting as spam should help Gmail learn how to block them from YOUR inbox. IIRC Gmail also unsubscribes for you if you click the appropriate option.
So there are two people doing this, but primarily one. I've learn that he:
Is 48, single, looking "for a bad girl" in Oklahoma. (note: I'm Australian so I guess our countries are even now)
Looking for foreclosed properties to buy.
Is in trouble with the IRS.
Crashed his car, wrote it off off, and was done for DUI.
It was sad actually, started off with just hiring romantic comedies from a redbox, then dating sites, then a brothel news letter. Lastly he booked a hotel room for two, then cancelled it a few hours later. My poor namesake isn't doing so well.
At any rate, whenever one of his lawyers emails me I tell them they've got the wrong address and that the guy really needs to learn what his email is. I've been given share links to presumably sensitive dropbox accounts on multiple occasions that I left alone.
On the upside, it's really easy to tell if it's for him. Gmail lets you have optional dots in your email address, e.g. first.last@gmail.com works the same as fistlast@gmail.com. I've always used first.last so whenever I see an email for firstlast I know it wasn't me. So might be a little late for you now but you could try migrating over new accounts to a dotted version.
It's turtles all the way down.
So, everything that makes it into your inbox from AdultFriendFinder or HotKangaroo dot com, create a gmail filter for. Have it automatically load into a label/folder called "Dumbo" and forget it. I wouldn't go to these sites and do anything with your email because it gives them an IP and validates your email as real.
Someone is signing you up for donkey porn. Just filter. Let the monster Gmail engine do its work.
Beef up your password strengths for your banks and billpay sites and such.
I was one of the early lucky people that registered a gmail address using my lastname@gmail.com.
There's your problem.
This is the way you make up an email addy:
pwgen -N 1 -0 12
You should NEVER use your real name anywhere in your email addy.
I think autocomplete might compound the problem. People get it wrong once and their browser helpfully offers the wrong email in future forms. They send a group email with a wrong address, people reply-all and then everyone's email client thinks it's a known address and helpfully offers it as an autocomplete option in future. I have a first name last name @ gmail account and I get it quite a bit. Sometimes included on some family emails, sometimes emails from lawyers. Some guys Xbox account (who are you Cationicllama88?). Once someone's uber/lyft account, which I presumably could have used. Mostly I just ignore them if it is just some random site someone has signed up to. If it's personal/business then I normally reply pointing out the mistake and then delete the email, those people are generally appreciative of the effort. The ride sharing company was a pleasant surprise, I expected them to be a faceless void but got a real person who sorted it out quickly.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I had to add my first 2 initals cause my last name was 2 letters short of the minimum, but got lucky as well. Someone was giving out my email with the same initials somehow leaving off the 2 digits off they added to my username. I eventually got a couple emails from friends who were able to get me in touch with the person. Has been fixed, though I have receive a few political emails from their state recently.
I was able before to track down to the area, but I didnâ(TM)t have enough to assume contact without the added help.
As to your situation, accounts that appear active, I also suggest either resetting the passwords or contacting the sites. Better that getting the added junk or worse. Most email services seem to reject bounces now and many are not taking security very serious by not authenticating the addresses first. Even credit services, though you needed more info to rest a password apparently.
Some spammer took my email address as their fake address and sent thousands of messages a day out. They weren't interested in receiving email at my address. They just wanted something to put there. That meant I got hundreds of mail bounces a day. The only solution in a case like mine was to get a new email address.
I have [firstname][lastinitial]@[ancientwebmail].com that I check maybe once every 6 months out of curiosity. Someone else with that combo signed up for a Facebook account. I tried to tell them (via Facebook) that they made a mistake and they told me to fuck myself.
OK then. So I use Facebook's password reset, changed their email to `pwgen 32 1`@gmail.com, and their password to something similar.
(Note: I never would have done that if they hadn't been so nasty when I originally tried to help them.)
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
So, like many older millenials, I was lucky enough to get an <firstinital><lastname>@gmail.com. I've had my email since gmail was invite only (2004?), and have amassed a large number of random emails throughout the years as I have a common anglo name as well.
Some highlights included getting invited to a girls' weekend somewhere in the carolinas. Checked out the girls, all early 20s and cute. Was attached at the time, otherwise I would have at least tried to invite myself along. Some guy in New York thought it was his email for a while, and he obviously did very well for himself as I had a few MSG tickets that would have been really cool to attend. Lots of other interesting things, and back when it first started I used to try to figure out who people were and respond to let them know they sent stuff to the wrong email. I used to explain the whole 'dot' issue in gmail, point out they could get their own domains, etc. One guy even called me out for having <firstinitial><lastname>@gmail.com AND <firstname><lastname>@gmail.com.
I also got all the crap spam stuff, and I have no real good advice on how to stop those. Like the submitter, I'm happily married, and I even give my wife delegate access to my account, so you can imagine the conversation it sparked when ashley madison emails started flooding in. Maybe I'll get some skeptical responses, maybe not, but I'd like to think I would have at least had enough common sense to use another email address (like a throwaway) to do that kind of thing. Luckily my wife believes me (kind of?) and we're still married (going on 12 years now). It certainly didn't help that I'm moderately successful and spend a lot of time working. The thing that really saved me was the delegate access she had to that email. Something to keep in mind for you 30 somethings like me who have been married for a while, have kids, and it's now more important to keep your family together than to have that private email account.
I know this doesn't help the matter, but it is important to understand how much further this situation can go - things I do not believe the submitter has encountered yet. The worst experience by far with my Apple ID as one person successfully reset my password by phoning Apple. It was a minister in the US, and she seems OK, but she had temporary access to my Apple account with a valid credit card associated with it. This experience especially, but also the ashley madison one before it, drastically changed my view of the risk profile associated with an email address. These days everything is two-factored that can be and I don't care if it means giving up my cell phone #. Any sites that cannot be two factored do not get my CC#. I've removed my profiles from a number of sites and really tried to slim my online exposure. Anyway, hopefully the submitter (and others) at least considers this scenario and takes some action. From one anglo sounding technophile to another.
Some japanese guy registered with my email on Twitter. Even though I never confirmed the account, twitter let him use the service regardless.
After receiving email notifications over and over again because that guy didn't change his notification settings, what I did was request a "lost password" from twitter, which sent me a recovery link to my email, I changed the password and posted on his wall with his account to call him out of his stupidity and why he's now locked out of it.
After leaving it up for 2 weeks to make sure he got the message, I decided to delete the account.
You have the email, unless it's something that you absolutely can't unsub of, like credit card statements(which you would need to escalate with the company itself), you're in control of everything. Lock them out of the accounts. If you don't want to go through that trouble just create a filter to automatically get rid of those emails as spam/trash.
If your name is bob@nowhere.com then I am sorry. Every time I want to access something that requires you to give them an email address before they will share information but I could care less if it is real, I use that one.
I'm an early adopter with a common name, too. People definitely use my address for junk, but Google somehow has figured it out and puts all the right stuff in the SPAM folder. I I've been reading this thread all afternoon but no-one seems to have had my experience though...
I started getting emails from somecompany.com that was clearly legit messages intended for a new employee. They even had the employee's @somecompany.com email address in the TO: line. Test emails confirmed that email sent there would wind up in my mail box. Her address was the same as mine, but with a period in it, @somecompany.com. I know what you're thinking; somecompany.com set up the wrong private forwarding address for their new employee? Nope. I got ahold of their admin by looking up the whois record for their domain. This company used Google to host their web page and email. They'd set everything up properly (so they swear) so it was GOOGLE that was conflating some.name@somecompany.com with somename@google.com!
Besides that, I've also done the reset password thing, but the few times I was actually able to find the person trying to open the new account, they would repeatedly re-reset the password and still try to use my email. Like, they thought they could seize my gmail by using it in some shopping site's sign-up form. Ugh.
I've also been able to peer at people's homes using Google street view, leave phone messages (they always seem to know better than to answer!) and set up salesman calls and visits for people who deserved them, heheh. Nothing damaging, ever. I pinkie-swear! :D
Same here. I've had my gmail address since 2004. What's scary is all of the services you can sign up for that DON'T require email verification. Early on I struggled with a large bank for two months and finally gave up. I still get statements and could theoretically change the password to login (but don't). Most recently an attorney sent me confidential information. That one was interesting, they tried to threaten me for intercepting the email. That one I actually took the time to explain but most I don't. I have dealt with two dating websites as well. With those, the only way out was to request a password change and reset the account information to a gibberish email address making the accounts inaccessible.
It has gotten better over the years because a few of these folks had family members send them email and I was able to get them to contact the person trying to use my gmail address. As far as I can tell there are about 5 others that thought they had my email address. Only one contacted me directly, they asked me if I would just give them the email address. I told them they could buy it from me. They offered $10, I countered with $5,000. That ended that.
These days when I have the time I will unsubscribe but those companies that don't have the option, I check the website for fraud or IT contact info and send one email. If I don't hear back, I report them as spam.
Again, it has gotten better over the years (I've been dealing with it for over 10). I'd like to believe some of them realize they aren't getting email and finally fix it. The dating websites... at least one of those didn't even have the same name (or any connection) so I think they were just giving a random email address (whether it was to start a new trial or whatever). But it seems to be the price you have to pay for as an early adopter to gmail. I'd be interested to see if anyone else can come up with a better solution (short of getting rid of it).
I personally just select spam option and set it to automatic delete. I believe I have 60 email addresses provided by some German company indirectly called 1&1 and I paid a company in Bitcoins to automatically register it. I think my registration name is Philip, and somebody else in Hollywood U.S. as a similar domain registration and he as owned that since the 1980s. I believe he was receiving demands to update his domain name when it should have been coming to me.. I have never owned a Gmail or Yahoo or any of those free? email addresses
What does it cost to have a customised email address peanuts. You have companies that specialises in registering alias domain names you pay them in Bitcoin's, and they register with a realistically sounding name and contact details it cost as little as $5 in the U.S. and they usually advertise themselves as "we protect your privacy." They will then send your pretend details to you so you can keep note.
My partner is in a similar situation. His name is .@gmail.com.
Unfortunately, (for you), there will be little sympathy from those who were forced to register countrybob200244@gmail.com because literally, everything is was taken.
OMG facts!
I think I was in the 2nd wave of gmail invites so I have a fairly simple address, too, and LOTS of people with the same last name somehow use it, from a PT therapist in Oklahoma, to a guy who just got rejected for FMLA and disability because they kept on sending his paperwork to MY gmail address (and since it was from a "do not reply as this is an unmonitored mailbox even a courtesy WTF? reply wouldn't work even if I was so inclined). The best is the lawyers who mis-send legal documents. They're the ones that I have fun with. I love when they get to the point where they threaten me...until I point out that *I'm* not the one who broke privilege and I can't be sanctioned by their bar like they can. That's the point where they usually go away.
Been there, did that -- but the problem happened @me. I still use the @mac.com address (myname@) for iTunes only. I've ignored @me, @icloud, etc otherwise.
For those accounts auto created and/or you get the confirmation email -- take control of the account. Close it and delete it. Pay attention along the way. I know how much he made and where from H&R Block. Garnished his @gmail account as he set the recovery email to me. Closed it.
Eventually he set his recovery email on one of the accounts somewhere (about to be deleted) to one he actually used. Now I had a way to contact him.
Emailed him maybe twice -- letting him know the @me address is, has been, and will continue to me mine. Stop trying to get into it @Apple too -- it locks the account and only I can unlock it (so far :). He set up a new account someplace and used it again, I email him, close the account, and moved on.
The problem quickly disappeared.
This has happened to me a few times. I just immediately ask for a password reset, take control of the account and remove all the information from it. It usually takes a day or two before I stop getting anything back. I've once had to contact a company and ask for the account to be deleted.
On most sites, you'll can reset this person's password any time. Rather than lock them out immediately, wait a little while until they've been using the account for a while, then reset their password, log in, and figure out who it is. Then you can contact them and ask them to stop (or play pranks, if that's your thing).
Also if you're in Europe, and the other person is in Australia, the emails that the Australian person generates will be from basically the opposite timezone. You could try filtering signup emails based that come in the middle of the night to a separate folder.
I would delete my account and get a new one. Also, I wouldn't be using gmail as it is a service that does not respect your freedom.
https://stallman.org/google.html
Fuck yeah! Glad to see the GNAA back in business
I logged into an old Yahoo account I found credentials too while cleaning up my password lists - my former ISP outsourced their mail to Yahoo better than 10 years ago - and found it was full of email related to other people. The name was somewhat common, I suppose, and was picked by my then roommate as you actually told the ISP what you wanted your email to be rather than create accounts yourself, before they farmed it off to Yahoo. (I was out that afternoon when it was setup.)
There was a Snapchat account of some young girl, an Instagram for a 40+ mom and a Facebook account for a middle aged man. In all cases I logged in and deleted their accounts. All but the Snapchat must have realized at some point their mistake, because they appeared abandoned for anywhere from a few months to a year.
I also found about 9 or 10 different people had signed up for various book clubs, food coupon deals, a shoe discount service of some sorts. This was about 6 months ago, I haven't logged back in since.
Someone created accounts in Battle.net and PLAN using addresses I own and I couldn't erase them. Other times I received confirmation emails to other services. I think it should be legally required to confirm your email address when you register in a service.
My partner had the same issue. She has <firstname>.<lastname>@gmail.com registered as an alias. Some lady in the US started giving that out as her own email address. At first, it was small things like fitness club registrations or store discount cards, but then it was rental agreements and loan applications. It became clear that this wasn't a one-off instance or simple misspelling. It was like reverse identity theft: this woman was effectively giving out everything (full name, birthdate, SS number, family member details, work details, bank details, CC details). The kind of things that can ruin a person's life if it got into the wrong hands.
Firstly we started documented everything, to show that it had been sent in an unsolicited manner, so there could be no accusations of identity theft.
Secondly, we tried responding to some of the emails stating that they had been given an incorrect email address. Most never responded, and some just didn't care. Many were from 'noreply' addresses, so nothing could be done.
Finally we managed to track this lady down on Facebook (from the information that had been sent) and my partner managed to message her in a friendly way to tell her to stop. The response she got was along the lines of 'HOW DARE YOU!!1! THAT IS MY NAME! YOU CAN'T STOP ME USING IT!". Reminding that it may be her name but it was not her email address got nowhere. My partner then responded that if she received anything more that she would treat it as a threat to her own identity and unsubscribe or seek to cancel any unsolicited agreements or communications.
The problem went away for a little bit, but then she tried to sign her kid up to some exclusive school with the email address, and my partner received the application. My partner responded simply that she had no idea what the application was about, that she would never consent to the application, and for the school to never contact her again. I guess the school did exactly that, because then the lady started emailing my partner: 'OMG!! IMA GONNA SUE YOU!'
At this point we stated that: 1) she was using my partner's email address without her permission; 2) she continued to do so after being advised that she was giving out the wrong email address, and after being advised of the consequences if she continued to do so; and 3) we weren't in the US, but she was welcome to try and bring a lawsuit against us. We don't care if she does. We have everything documented, should she wish to try.
After all of that, there has been nothing since.
My email is first initial+last name @gmail.com. My dad's email is first initial(same letter as me), + middle initial+ last name@gmail. Since his old account was first initial+ last name@netscape, he regularly gives out the wrong address (mine) to his friends and websites. At least it's mine and not some random person complaining on Slashdot...
I have filters setup to forward all these messages to him, but this is probably not what you want to do because it would encourage this behavior.
Here's how to keep your email address, but prevent anyone else from receiving email sent to that address:
Suppose you have email address A. Sign up for another email address B. Then ask your email provider to do this: For each email that is addressed to A, please don't send it to A, and automatically re-direct it to your B email address. So if I've broken into your A account, I won't see any more email sent to A, because the email is being sent to B, and I don't know anything about your B email account.
That won't stop you from getting junk mail sent to A. However, suppose I try the "Forgot my password; please email me a link to reset it" trick to reset your bank password. The bank will send the reset email information to A, which is automatically redirected to B. So I won't see the bank's response, because I'm looking at the A account, and I don't know anything about B.
Babs, are you a schoolteacher perchance?
I bet your problem is that someone else has the same email but with a dot in it somewhere. I ran into this problem a few years back-- I had also registered lastname@gmail.com, and I started getting emails for l.astname@gmail.com and a couple other variations.
There was an Asian couple in Virginia, I got their emailed Apple Store receipts. And there was someone in South Africa who was renting out an apartment, so I got all kinds of information from prospective renters like photocopies of passports and pay stubs.
I ultimately had to abandon that address and get a different one.
The quality of posts has been disturbing lately, and now I'm actually considering removing slash dot net from my RSS. I'm not a leader, I feel, but a reluctant follower.
--Jim (me)
Go to the site that sent you the email. Attempt to log in with your email address and a bunch of crap as the password, repeat until you lock the account. You may get an email stating the account is locked, or maybe not... If you get the email try to reset and change the password. Try to lock them out of the account they set up.
Comcast was hacked a while back and my account was accessed and the inbox was harvested for email addresses. Someone is sending spam and malware email to email addresses I have not seen or used since 2007. I am getting emails bounced back to me as undeliverable. Some of the email headers trace back to computers and accounts on Cox dot net. Every once in a while I grab the email account listed in the header and attempt multiple logins with crap passwords at both the account and billing servers. I repeat until the account is locked. Other email headers trace back to eastern European servers. Thanks Trump! Will it be Putin - Pence in 2020 too?
Legal advice is suspect. Do not do this. Especially if you do not know country of owner.
Post your email account here so we can use it to sign up for sites. you'll become so flooded with crap that you won't care about that other person.
I have this issue with gmail, and with my ISP. In one instance the other person's email is off by one (the .) in the other, I think they are off by a plural. At any rate one of them is in violation of HIPPA several times a year, (or rather their organization is) as they email her patient info. Which itself is a hippa violation, as patient info shouldn't be emailed un-encrypted.... So for both of them I keep marking those as spam, but because the way the providers spam filters work when the other person marks it as Legitimate email, it unmarks it as spam for me as well. Very frustrating.
got firstname.lastname@gmail.com back when it was invitation only. Recently someone has started using it without the dot. I was nice the first time it happened and didn't cancel his opentable reservation, but it continues to happen on occasion. If it ever gets annoying I'll dig deeper but so far I just delete the emails sent to him and it's all good.
Always use your boss' email for questionable sites. Also, give his name and number to chicks at the bar if you are not interested.
I have a not-all-that-unusual name in my country and often get private e-mail meant for someone else. Usually I notify the sender and more often than not get an annoying "I'm so sorry!" message to give me yet another message I shouldn't get (sometimes also from other - correct - recipients, "I'm so sorry too"). However, a few things have been interesting:
- one guy ordered a pretty expensive laptop and used my e-mail to do it. In that case, I went through the effort of finding out his phone # and sending him an SMS to tell him what had happened. He actually freaked out about his mistake and thanked me very much. I did realize that I could have logged in and still altered the delivery address so all I would've needed was a postal one not traceable to me to get a free laptop. I'm not a criminal so I don't know precisely how to get such an address but I doubt that it's too hard (DHL etc. do practically nothing to verify the recipient, the post office is a little bit more diligent in this country).
- I know that some 50-60 year-old-guy continuously signs up (and pays for!) many dating sites. I've thought of logging in to alter his profile to include "I forgive and forget easily since I have early stage Alzheimer's"
- What I'm now waiting for is an onslaught of hot nudies from fans of an up-and-coming soccer player since one with my name exists. Addendum: His existence has the additional benefit that pages and pages and pages about him precede any of my teenage stupidity online =)
I've had this problem for years - a prison building contractor in Africa uses my gmail address for many of his accounts payable. I get invoices all the time for toilets, timecard machines, tons of concrete, lumber, copper tubing, etc. It's actually quite interesting, and while he's gotten a few second/third notices on payments, it always seems to be get resolved.
I tried to fix the problem years ago but no one would respond, so I finally gave up trying.
RTFS, Australia.
I have a common name and was happy back in the mid-1990's to get an email address with my name (it's not John Smith) like JSmith@bigISP.com. I thought it was cool not to have to put numbers at the end of my name.
I, too, got the emails from people who were trying to reach JSmith2, or who thought that Joe Smith should have email JSmith@bigISP.com, and the JSmith@OtherISP.com.
If it seemed like a nice person (baby announcement, wedding plans, etc) I would reply and let them know they had oopsed the email address.
I ignored the invites to parties from college women who were friends of Jane Smith. Too old-dude creepy to reply to that.
And then there was this company whose employees used email addresses of bigISP.com for their business.
One of them was Joe Smith who got the email address J_Smith@bigISP.com. Underscores are often invisible if the text box has a line under it.
I replied back a couple of times to the sender with "hey you oopsed he's not this email address". I never contacted who I thought was the intended recipient. Never got a reply from those, but it happened rarely enough.
Then, about a year later, I got a couple of misdirected emails from those people that made me realize that they were criminals. They were taking their gains (sounded like a lot) and shutting down to begin anew elsewhere.
Now I'm really uncomfortable. I really wished that I had not let these people know that I had been getting any of their emails because it's not that hard to dox someone if you know their real name, as it is partially in my email address. I didn't want to talk to them.
I was even more worried in that perhaps the FBI would get after them, get their emails, and see the ones from me, and wonder if the JSmith (me) was the same as the J_Smith (criminal) and why was I emailing those bad guys. And we all know that the FBI doesn't always ring the doorbell and wait for you to put on your clothes before coming in.
So, for the last ~20 years, I just delete all misdirected emails.
And I never considered logging on as the person signing up for something to change the password/email because it is clearly against the law to logon to someone else's account, and it is especially stupid because you're leaving your activity in their logfiles.
Also it could make me liable for whatever civil damages some lawyer could dream up, which at best could cost me legal fees.
The biggest pain was bigISP once let someone talk their helpdesk into changing the password on my email. (No it isn't AOL or anything like that)
I learned to not use the JSmith email address for anything having to do with money or personal info. I have an obscure address for that.
I've had a personal server, registered domain, and email (John@johnsmith.com) since forever, but I don't use that because I foolishly used my real identification in the whois when setting it up. Live and learn.
Don't you people know that you should not use your name in an email address?
Is what Hired Hackers and Darkweb Hitmen are FOR! :-) J/K!
Be aware that some companies will just totally MAKE UP an email addresses for people who purposely leave their email address blank. My insurance company was sending email to first.last@gmail.com for several years before I noticed it printed on a renewal and said "I never gave you an email address, and I've certainly never had that email address." I'm glad the owner of that address didn't change with my insurance policy.
p.s. Name and shame: Allstate.
I've had some fool that YEARS ago tried to convince Google that my email address belonged to him, and he's been giving it out to everyone ever since. I get stuff from his lawyers, his accountants, his children, etc etc etc. Nobody seems to care. Once in a while I reply to some of it and I cancel the subscriptions to various mailing lists of churches, professional groups, etc that otherwise fill my in box, not to mention iTunes, etc. It never stops. I have no idea how the guy functions with all his mail going to me, but apparently he's just that clueless. I could probably rob him blind if I was so inclined.
The point is, LOTS of people are just that utterly ignorant and careless. Some of them simply will not ever get a clue.
That's what I do. I steal their accounts. I reset their passwords. I cancel their hotel reservations. Their car reservations. If these bastards can't bother using their real email address, they can't fix the problem. When they show up and there aren't any available rooms, or cars they'll get the message. I just tried to register for an indeed account and they used my full email. So I reset the password and deleted all their info and put mine. Lazy bastards!! If they use my Email, It's my account now!!
I managed to register a common word @gmail.com when gmail was still invite only -- it was pretty neat initially but I've had to abandon use of that inbox. The amount of crap people sign up to using my address is ridiculous.
I have my own domain name. It's not even a .com/.net/.org, it's under my county's tld.
My personal email address at that domain is green1, which, while not unique, is rare enough I'd think, and there are a grand total of 4 people with accounts in that domain, none similar to mine.
I recently signed up for an Uber account and found my email address already in use, by someone in a different country. Someone signed up as a driver. I thought about taking over the account, but there are many fields in the settings that they don't let you change. I ended up contacting Uber and having them delete the account so I could sign up properly.
I was shocked that a company like Uber wouldn't check your email address when you sign up, but I confirmed when I created my be account that no confirmation is sent.
To all of those who have posted or have questions about bugs in email systems which route a.bc@ to abc@:
All standards compliant email systems allow periods in the name portion, and they are ignored when determining the destination mailbox. So, A.BC@something goes into the ABC@something mailbox. ABC, A.B.C, A.BC, etc all go into the same mailbox. But you can generally use the extra periods as a pattern to filter the emails. For example, you can provide A.BC to trusted parties and then filter everything else into a junk folder.
Some websites and email systems erroneously don't allow or misinterpret the periods. That gives you an idea of how closely they understand and follow internet standards for email. Gmail does it correctly.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_address#Syntax for an explanation of what is allowed.
no, this is fantastic practical advice.
"...Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence..."
I run a small IT business & have my own domain - and i have a catchall on my domain;
my domain is something like ***ss.net.au (I'm in Australia)
I discovered there's a web design business in another state, in Australia, which has a very similar domain - ***s.net.au
The only difference between our domains being a single letter 's'.
On a daily basis, i receive emails which are meant for their staff - as it seems their staff are always signing their domain (in their email address) as my domain (and using 2 letter "s").
Sometimes, when I'm feeling nice, I'll respond to their customers explaining that their web design supplier are idiots & giving them the wrong email address. And while i haven't done it yet, I keep thinking i should exploit their incompetence & try and steal their clients... as im just starting to expand my range of services to now include web design.
I would have thought that a 'Web Design' business would be more aware of this, than compared to your average layman - given they all know my domain & business exists... but obviously im dealing with a bunch of incompetent fools.
I'm also a lucky owner of a common @gmail.com address. I've been sent emails about church groups, family events, and appointments from people around the world. When I can correct the issue, I do. I reply all and let them know that I am not part of their group or family and to let the person know they got the email wrong. If I receive a similar email from the same group, I respond the same way. A third time will result in a strongly worded response... reply all, of course. If, however, I'm emailed a fourth time, I introduce them to blue waffles or other similar themes. This four step process does the trick.
For other things like unsolicited emails from noreply@whatever.com I just mark it as spam.
Gmail allowed people to sign up with last.name@gmail.com as well and you'd end up recieving emails meant for that address.
Gmail vehemently denies this happened today, but we affected people know it is true. I wish we had one class action against Gmail for this.
There is currently no way to stop spam. Once an email address has been compromised, you are out of luck. Kill it and start a new one.
If you have pull, try to convince your company to use a self-tagging email system (my blog post describing such a system)
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
A couple of my email addresses are similar to those that others use. :P
Case 1: Each time they use it, I click the "this wasn't me" when they try and sign up (it was for something like the equivalent of yahoo games). By that stage they've already worked it out themselves and cancelled it
Case 2: I get emails for a few different people. If the sender looks legit, I'll do a bit of digging, and if they are a legit sender, I'll generally let them know they have the wrong person.
My gmail account is my first initial and last name, which just happens to translate to a common Indian first name and last initial. The emails I get for this person always come with a period in between (i.e. "abcd.e@gmail.com" rather than "abcde@gmail.com"). I get banking emails, travels emails, etc. All legitimate email.
I've asked Google about it, and did eventually get a reply: They claim there is no possible way someone has registered "abcd.e" as a username when "abcde" exists because they always treat them as the same and strip the periods. Personally I think it's bullshit. I've tried to find a way to contact the other person but to no avail.
I've had a 6-character gmail account ever since gmail was an invite-only beta, and the address apparently is similar to the name of a travel agency in India.
I've received dozens of mis-addressed internal emails from their travel agents who kept sending over scanned copies of their customer's passports, visa application forms, and travel itineraries -- which kept happening no matter how many reminders I sent back to the agents as well as the customer support email for the travel agency.
As soon as I realized what was happening I started deleting all of these emails without opening them, but the only way I finally was able to stop them from sending those message in the first place was by reaching out to their UK-based parent organization, suggesting that they may want to have a chat with their daughter company about their on-going habit of sending presumably private customer information to random strangers on the internet.
(So yeah -- if you ever handed your passport to a travel agent while booking a trip to apply for a travel visa or something, they may have turned around and emailed it as an unencrypted attachment who-knows-where to a a free email account hosted in a country on the other side of the planet without even bothering to double-check the recipient name. Sleep tight!)
I also have a gMail address from before gMail went public. Starting a couple years ago this very problem has mushroomed to nearly make the account largely unusable. There's over 200 sites/services now in my 'bogus user' list. I've gotten both spam, AND legitimate mail from accounts being created by either idiots, harassers, or those attempting identity theft. I've been sent personal information (Full names, addresses, VIN numbers, etc.) from legitimate services (Hello Macy's, SunTrust Bank, Dodge motors, Flowers.com, Red Roof Inns, Amazon....the list goes on).
The only real cure for this is to get all *legitimate* services to do the following affirmative confirmation process BEFORE activating a new account or e-mail address change:
- Generate a mail to the submitted address with the following very conspicuous link:
"I am not this person. I did not request this account or change."
Note that this mail can also have a "Yes, please create the account or change the address." but a NEGATIVE reply option is essential.
- if the negative link is clicked, the account should be immediately deleted, or at least made inactive and flagged as suspicious. The email address should be COMPLETELY removed from the company's records, AND from all third-party advertisers/"partners"/whatever.
- At NO time should an functioning account be activated without a positive confirmation.
I've had some very positive results with companies that really understand the problem, and quite a few are adopting the process since legitimate places don't really want to annoy potential customers. The biggest problem is getting to anyone IN companies that haven't got a clue in order to educate them.
How could we know you do not have a split personality? What if you did these without knowing? Huh?
Could the other person be using an email address that contains punctuation chars which, when removed, make it the same as your email?
Their address: John.son@gmail; yours johnson@gmail. Or theirs: Abraham.O.Vitch@gmail; yours: abrahamovitch@gmail
I don't know how Gmail would have left them create such an account without a name collision alert.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I see this all the time. There is a Mercedes dealer in New Jersey that wants me to trade in my 2014 S-class. (I have never been to NJ and I don't own a Mercedes.) I get regular notices about a short-term loan taken out by someone in Tennessee, who has apparently never made a payment. And I get multiple messages every day from ADT Canada, letting me know when someone in Toronto arms or disarms his home security system.
The only company that handled this well was Netflix. I got an E-mail thanking me for signing up, followed almost immediately by a message from their tech support regarding problems signing in. That included a number which was answered in less than a minute when I called, and the rep apologized (with a smile) and fixed it immediately.
So I have two gmail handles: one is firstname.middleinitial.lastname@gmail.com, the other is a not uncommon last name in a certain Latin American country from which my family hails (but not my own last name, long story, but it's a nickname).
The F.M.L.@gmail.com doesn't give me too much trouble. Someone with the opposite gender has a similar name, and sometimes I get emails from Australia, mostly for clothing and housewares.
The Latino lastname@gmail.com is more of an issue. I had someone use it to start a Twitter account (which I promptly took over). I have innumerable things I've been subscribed to in both English and Spanish. I am bombarded by people who think I'm a banker, a BMW buyer, and my favorite, a medical doctor.
The best email I ever got: a woman who thought I was a plastic surgeon, and wanted a boob job for her teenage daughter. And one for herself. And a vaginoplasty. I kid you not.
I have this happen with two different people, one in the UK and one in Alabama (I'm in California). I think there is also a guy in southern California. Sometimes I try to help them out, like when I get emails confirming a job interview, or something else. Have never figured out the correct email for any of them.
Other times it is just a pain - the guy in Alabama has my email on his Redbox account, but the password reset only links to my account. However, the funniest was when he signed up for Comcast just at the same time I moved and was forced to also sign up with them, so I couldn't just plonk them. I tried calling and telling them that they needed a new email address for him, but the lady on the phone was completely unable to understand what was going on, and I had to just hang up before she cancelled my account.
OMG! I have been doing this for decades. There is some poor guy with fred@fred.com who keeps getting spam. After a while, websites started to catch on, and I couldn't use fred@fred.com anymore.
That's when I switched to fred@fred.net.
Same here, I got in early during invite only and got [initials][surname]@gmail.com.
From nail and hair appointments in Arizona, Western Union account details, flight reservations, all the way to some poor sap who probably missed out on a basketball scholarship because they couldn't get their address right (multiple times)
I try to do the right thing and inform the sender of their error for important things, even tracked down one of the intended recipients ("Why are you emailing me from MY ACCOUNT!!1!1"), but at the end of the day you just drop the crap into the spam filter/trash
Delete and ignore like other spam. Do not contact the guy. You don't know how that would end. It can easily ruin your and your family's life. There are enough psychos on this planet.
So the critical question to me is, has Google ever, at any time, allowed duplicate gmail accounts to be created? It is fine that Google ignores dots in accounts as long as they don’t allow the same account to be created without dots.
If for instance if you create the account anexample@gmail.com and Google would consider an.example@gmail.com to be the same thing, they should not then allow a new account an.example@gmail.com to be created since anexample@gmail.com already exists.
If they did allow an.example@gmail.com to be created when anexample@gmail.com already exists, that would obviously create *huge* problems. For instance if the admin email for a domain is anexample@gmail.com, someone else could create an.example@gmail.com, then potentially a fraudulent domain transfer could be initiated where the transfer email goes to both anexample@ and an.example@ or worse, just to an.example@.
Is it a settled thing that Gmail has never allowed duplicate accounts in this manner with dots? Google seems to say that they have never allowed that, but I wonder...
User error!
* Gmail
* Facebook
If your business is on Facebook I will boycott your products. Go read market-ticker to learn why, I'm not your daddy, and I ain't whipping out my wallet for you pieces of shit anymore.
I know someone who signed up for Apple's Mobile Me (before it became iCloud) with firstname@me.com - even though she has 2FA on, she has to deal with having her account locked 2-3 times per week as someone else decides that it must be their email address and tries to guess the password too many times, thereby locking the account.
She has a long and complex password on the account and has two-factor authentication, but Apple can't do anything about the literal DOS on her account of frequently having people lock the account after incorrectly guessing the password too many times.
It's really frustrating, but as she's been using the account for so long now, with so many services linked to that email address, she doesn't want to change - plus that would be like admitting defeat...
I am continually amazed at how so many people (or maybe it's just the same person every time?) don't know their own email address - or maybe they think that they deserve the account more than the actual owner, so keep trying to guess in the hope that they'll get in one day.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
They may be different reasons leading to situation as you describe. ... ... It happen that i enter bogus emails if i am not interested to return to this site. ... we need to show growth in number of users ... here is list of emails with names , hey guys write script to create 10k users before end of quarter. Something like "Shadow profiles of Facebook"
1) as mentioned above , somebody forgot that his email does have suffix because your email was already used.
harmless. Playing wit forgot password may bring interesting results
2) permanent nagging to create account before accessing content
3) result of automated "registration"
I would sort in probability order 3) 1) 2)
Here's an odd one. My domain (see the message bar) keeps getting emails from British Telecom about some company's ADSL service. I had their address, their service details, etc. Oddly enough, though even though I get these emails, I can't "password reset" it using that address - it always comes back as not found, even though the link takes me to their log in page. Go figure.
Since i only get it now and again, and not for a long while now, I can only assume they're out of business.
I also got one from some guy with a US West bank account, and I think that same guy used it for travel websites because I kept getting surveys for how my trip was. I ignored them at first, then decided screw with the surveys - hey, they're asking me about my non-existent trip? Sure, I'll answer them! Giving one-star ratings and berating the staff never felt so cathartic. I even said to cancel my account as I never want to be a customer of them again. Oddly, those stopped a long while back as well. Either I made it so that guy's travel arrangements got really hard to make or the CAN SPAM laws made everyone scrub their mailing list.
Now, my Gmail, however, accidentally had it happen, and I got some really confusing emails about board meetings and whatnot. And some rather personal information as they forward application forms between them. Figuring out what happened, I sent them a nice email that they really did have the wrong person and got an invite to visit them if I was in the area (I live on the west coast, they are east coast). But that was only because they're actually a group of people who'd I'd actually be interested in spending time with.
Took a week to get it resolved because the mailing list I got put on (to send to the board) generated only like 1 email a day. So I had to figure out if it was a fluke, or if someone made an error. It turns out the real guy's email had numbers at the end and whomever entered it in the mailing list software truncated it.
I don't understand why my domain got hit with them - it's not like it was close to any ISP or somesuch, and it's even a .net - the .com was taken and I've had it for 16 years now.
My yahoo address is first initial last name (I got on early, like 2 months after yahoo mail started). All the time I get stuff for people with same last name and first initial.
A lot of times it's stuff where people have to supply an email but don't really "need" it, like they have it linked to mobile # too.
But regardless of whether they seem legit or not, my solution is to ignore them all, not worth taking the chance that even a really good looking one is just super sophisticated phishing.
Someone in the US (I'm elsewhere) uses my email address and I'm sick of unsubscribing from their marketing crap.
They use it to sign up to those annoying services like samsung accounts, when they register a new phone, or other online services rhey only use once. I now change the password and delete the account whenever I can be fussed.
They do order things from the internet, though, including home supplies, hunting equipment (not weapons fortunately), toys and, even once, 'butt-enhancing' underwear (whatever that is).
I do have their home address and even their phone number, because I get order confirmations to my email. I tried calling them once but they didn't answer.
They also get flight bookings from a major US airline. I've considered trying to use the account to cancel a flight, but I think that might be an excessive escalation. The airline, of course, doesn't make it at all easy to report the misuse of my email address - last time I checked I had to call a toll free number in the US which didn't work from outside the country!
I have this problem also. Even worse, I receive banks statements, transaction notifications, and bills. Even worse that a bunch of web 2.0 apps used to skip e-mail address verification and I ended up with a couple Twitter and Instagram accounts
Once someone was giving out my email address as his, though his was one character different but he was a dumbfuck and could not understand what he was doing wrong when I contacted him telling him of his error, so after 3 months I just started to reply to any emails that came to me instead of him. He soon finally understood what he was doing wrong as I replied to one of the emails that was from his work manager by saying I had a gay crush on him and I would dearly love to rim him during the lunch hour and also cc'd his wife in as well.
I have a very common name and surname in southern Italy.
I have been using since 1998 a Yahoo mailbox exactly after that name. Later on, circa 2006, I also registered on Gmail.
I still use both.
I was getting once or twice a week messages aimed to some homonym of mine. Utility bills, service registration confirmations requests or acknowledgements, dating requests, social network notifications and the likes.
I reached a peak of two messages a day.
How I solved?
1. Contact the originators asking to black list that email address as I don't want to be bothered.
2. Unsubscribe from mailing lists.
3. Mark those senders as spammers
4. As last resort, recover and change the password, delete all emails, posts and services but don't delete the account.
I am now at a few messages per month.
The problem is with the disappearing of email verification process. Those pesky mobile applications let you enter any email address without checking.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
No! You're doing it all wrong!
Eventually you'll find out their *real* email address. Then create a filter for your inbox to auto-forward emails destined for that person (based on sender) to their real email address. They'll see them come in as normal and continue using your email for things, as they think they own it. Meanwhile, you'll be inline harvesting all their mail. Eventually you'll start getting all the personal, revealing stuff and then... ??? Profit!
My wife and I were both very early Gmail users (our lastname@gmail.com) and we both get a ton of accounts signup email this way. First, reset the passwords, and then go to lengths to lock them out of their own accounts. As the final blow, once you've modified all detail about their account, just change the account email address to something else entirely. The last step is to fend-off any recovery attempt. Even if they gave any details to customer service by phone (supposedly), by the time they do their old account has zero identifiable data that they can latch on to recover it.
I don't know about Gmail but with my provider, if you're not on my whitelist (i.e.: If I didn't manually added your name and address), your message will be trashed automati :) Hope it helps.
cally. I have about 15 people on my whitelist, that's all the mail I can get
Same thing happened to me. I have a fairly common name. Someone started using my email to sign up for job hunting sites.
I marked every service as SPAM. Although it was tempting to sign into these accounts, laws in my country (USA) could have put me at fault for hacking or identity theft.
Eventually, the person tried to make a new email address and used my email as a reference email. Google asked if I created this new email and gave me the option to permanently diaconnect the two accounts.
Yes. People are this dumb. Really.
I work in a public library teaching people how to use computers. Often times, seniors think that just because it is their names, the emails belong to them. People also think that if they "think" of an email, it belongs to them. They don't understand creating accounts. It's like seeing a house and assuming it is yours because you know the address
I was an early adopter of usa.net email, which was my firstname@usa.net.
Once the service became popular, I started receiving all sorts of interesting emails. Back then, a lot of email programs assumed you were sending to your local server if you simply wrote a name without @differentdomain.org. So sending an email with {To: bob doorman@bigcomm.com} generated to emails, one to doorman@bigcomm.com and one to bob@usa.net.
If you feel like it respond to the sender and let them know. I still do that when I get emails sent to the biotech company with a similar domain to mine. Or, laugh and let it go.
P.S. you've also got an out when you need to order viagra online. You can just say it is an error email. :)
Have you changed your gmail password? You can not only change your password but enable 2FA (two-factor authentication) so that you can add a further layer of security. You might even try something similar to what I did. I stopped using the free email services altogether. I bought a domain and setup my own email and web server on a cloud VPS. Certainly it costs me 20.00 a month but I get total control and google no longer gets any personal email history. If you work in IT, it's not terribly difficult to do and the results are satisfying. My email and web server is powered by OpenBSD and it allowed me to implement a highly aggressive anti-spam solution. There are a few providers out there that do it really inexpensively: Scaleway, VPSCheap, and Vultr just to name a few. You can find plenty of help setting this up on Google.
https://ask.slashdot.org/story...
https://ask.slashdot.org/story...
If anything, I'm surprised the email medium is still so relevant for anything not serious.
is to make a new account with a less popular name. Sorry, I know, it sucks, but that is the price you pay for using a "generic" login on what turns out to be a very popular service. It was difficult to see this problem years ago, so it's not really your fault, but you have to deal with it now.
I registered first.middle.last@gmail.com a few years ago when I went job hunting. I already had another one I'd made shortly after they came out (and I got an invite! remember those days?) but it was more of my online nickname and wasn't really that professional.
Nowadays it can be really hard to find a username that's not already taken on a big service like gmail. Or slashdot for that matter. Check out my nick here. I haven't had it for that long compared to some here. (my nick may be short, but my UID isn't impressively small) I just got very lucky it wasn't already taken, as ALL the longer variations were - this was a last-ditch sign-up attempt that really surprised me when it went through.
So just try to pick something that will endure for awhile. first.last@service.com isn't even really good enough nowadays. Common substitutions don't even work most of the time. In the end it will be easier to remember several.words.in.username@service.com than some leet-speak-mess@service.com. Compare for example: GH05T@service.com vs say ghost.in.the.shell@service.com. Shorter isn't always easier to remember or convey over the phone or accurately in writing.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I am in a similar situation. I have the email address "myfirstname" at gmail. There is some woman who was maybe 10 when I got the address who thinks it's hers. I know an incredible amount about this woman, where she lives and works. What kind of car she drives. Her mortgage rate. Where she went to the gym. When she needed to get her car serviced. She even used my email for her instagram, so I know what her and her kid looks like. (I may have cancelled her gym membership and a few other things)
Finally, I got an email with her sister's address/phone number, and I called her sister. I explained the situation, found out that her sister knew and thought that I'd eventually give up the address! So I went through all of the things that I knew about her and her family. Her sister was understandably freaked out and told their mom. A few days later, I get a very nice email (cc'd to the mom & sister) about how she was sorry and wouldn't do it again.
Since then, the traffic is more manageable. Maybe 1 thing a month.
If the usurper uses the borrowed email address on a site with illegal services, e.g. kiddie porn, the asker could be in for a legal nightmare.
Same exact thing happens to me. People think my email address is theirs, and they sign up for all sorts of things. I reset the password and close the account where I can, lecture the source on not trusting email addresses before verifying them if I'm feeling particularly annoyed, and otherwise add them to my spam filter.
Funny thing, though: the two sources I have the most trouble with are banks and phone companies. If one of their customers signed up with my email address, then I get sent all sorts of their personal information in my email - their phone number, bank account number, bank balance, SSN, postal address, &c. If I then try to contact the bank or phone company and say "yo, stop sending me your customer's PII," they often require me to provide an additional piece of information such as the customer's mother's maiden name before they'll listen to me. And of course I have no idea what that is.
And when I am able to finally convince them that they're sending their customer's information to the wrong person, often they tell me they're not allowed to edit the account and fix the problem without the customer's consent. "We need to contact the customer and ask him to update his information," they say.
And then a few minutes later, I receive an email in my inbox, asking the customer to please verify his email address...
I made the poor choice of making my e-mail address firstnamelastinitial@gmail.com back in the early beta period, and I'm constantly getting new account signups from people with the same first name and last initial. I probably have an account on almost every dating site, online game, and file sharing site in existence at this point.
I used to take over some of the accounts by having by doing a password reset on the account, but it was still a pain to unsubscribe myself from all of the mailing lists that I got signed up for. I REALLY wish that more sites would use a confirmation link before adding you to their mailing list.
If I had to do it over, I'd use my full name, middle initial, and full last name in my e-mail. I probably wouldn't use GMail, either, since it seems to be a target for spammers as well.
I get these constantly, from owning [first_initial].[lastname]@gmail.com. Luckily my name is fairly uncommon. I always wonder how many of these errors are from customer service reps who are required to enter an email address, and the customer won't give them one, so they just enter [first][last]@gmail.com.
It is relevant because the person Lostone responded to was giving incorrect information in a generalization. RFCs give site owners the ability to control how a dot works in their email system.
If AC above would have said "In Google's world" it would have been correct, but they were not so specific. On a techie site especially, the difference between RFC and [SITE] implementation is a good thing.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I apparently have a common user id (not email) on a large company brokerage account that is associated with my stock options and ESPP. For a while, every time I tried to login, I was locked out, there was no online reset password option, you had to call. Apparently, someone was trying to use my account name, and locked it. The (un)helpful person at customer service suggested I change my user id; I've had the account for over 25 years, I'd rather not (although I think I eventually did).
I have a common @gmail.com as well, and given the number of "name doesn't match email" things I get, I'm pretty convinced spammers are using my email in web forms as a from to see if they can manage to use them to send spam. In the early days I used to get a lot of backscatter -- not sure why I in particular got picked for the from address, but I did. I see idiots send mail badly too -- church groups, airline tickets, house closing documents, all that good stuff, but most of what I get is rewards mail crap and I'm pretty convinced its a bot (or chinese/indian spammer dude) plugging in my email to forms online in hopes of finding a broken one to send spam with.
Any company who sends mail without using a confirmation gets the spam button. I generally don't bother trying to unsubscribe -- its a hopeless quest. 2000+ spam messages on an account I don't really use much in the last 30 days. Thumbtack is the current moron-of-the-week having sent a confirmation mail I didn't click on, and then sent spam anyway. They got the spam treatment for that behavior.
Just go register a @gmail.com and use that for real communications. Give it to friends, etc. Websites that demand an email can have your spammy.one@gmail.com.
I get this happening all the time. At first I thought I was hacked then realized that no email verification was used. So now I go to the account site where they set me up and change password.
That happens to everyone, dozens of times. That's why so much spam is sent to everyone: your email address is passed around on lists.
The only difference is that your case is (probably) less nefarious. It's being done accidentally.
Nevertheless, one easy solution is to treat it as the mundane, typical every-day case: just ignore or filter out the unwanted replies. If the other person is doing it as a mistake, they'll probably eventually stop doing it, after noticing that all the stuff they sign up for, they never get the click-this-to-finish-your-registration emails.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I've had this happen a lot.
One guy gave it to his new employer - had anice conversation with them.
Some one tried to sign up some kind of adult ed autmotive repair class in Scotland. I had to let them know that the commute would be prohibitive.
I was invited to a family christmas party. Who give family a bogus address?
It goes on and on. Used to bother me a lot but lately I have treated it as cheap entertainment.
Hey dude, if your email is jsmith@hotmail.com, sorry. My bad.
Make sure you have multi factor set up. Just delete those e-mails. Someone may have registered one that is close to yours. Who knows.
Set up multi factor.
Go in and look at any computers that google thinks is authorized. You probably should blow all of them away and re-certify your machines just in case.
Do you have kids or a wife that may be doing this? Someone could be gas lighting you. If they are, laugh.
Advanced malice hides as incompetence.
I use an older mac (snow leopard or older) can Bounce the email you receive sending it back as "undeliverable"
I hate that crApple has taken away that feature! every morning I go to the old mac so I can Bounce = terminate the spam once and for all.
I had a similar problem with Comcast. I changed my email address with everyone, then disabled the account in question retaining ownership thus frustrating its misuse.
If this is really a major concern, try to sign in to the account, use the 'forgot password' button and the account becomes yours. Change the settings to stop the email and don't log in again. Do that for every site that troubles you. Tell your family what you're doing, of course. After that, adjust your spam settings. Personally, I find outlook/hotmail spam settings superior to gmail's but that's just me, I suppose.
If you have a smartphone, use 2FA where possible. Google offers 2-step verification.
Use a password manager to generate random and complex passwords, such as keypassX. Use long and complex passwords which are impossible to guess and use a different email / password combination for each online application, e.g. your.name.linkedin@gmail.com, your.name.facebook@gmail.com, etc.
Do not store your keypassX database on your computer, but on a separate, dedicated USB drive, which you should also encrypt in case it gets lost or stolen. Make sure you have a copy (a second USB drive) in a secure location.
If you are using Windows, make sure there are no key loggers installed.
Happens all the time. I have a .mac address as a long-standing email -- due to Apple's branding shifts for the service over the years that is the same as "name@me.com" and "name@icloud.com" -- people fat-finger their addresses or read them over the phone and there you go.
I've gotten Redbox alerts from VA, Starbucks refills from CA, Sprint bills from CO, and golf club member reference requests from New South Wales. (Mike the anesthesiologist has been known to slack a bit on his time cards.)
The only one I truly had to raise a flag on was Florida Mike's attorneys who were sending me his divorce negotiations. After several tries to get them to correct it, I called the office and explained that my next call would be to the Florida Bar Assoc. if they insisted on sending privileged info to a stranger.
Who claimed to be offering legal advice? Who claimed to be qualified to do so?
Gg
I get so much garbage and adverts and timewasters in my free mailboxes that I almost never read any of it. They work great for notifications and stuff though. I like my gmail for all other features that come with it, and seamless integration into all of the neat free-for-usage-data googley communication things. My gmail address is one of the few extremely-short-no extra characters addresses, and I'm kinda proud of that, but for official business I keep theboss@mydomain.com clean and tidy for official communications. Maintaining them both allows me the flexibility to participate in online discussions like this one outside of official capacity.
In my experience, doing business over email has become a requirement, and presenting @gmail/@yahoo/@aol/@hotmail just screams tech lazy at best, and fly-by-night at worst. These free addresses are expected at the top of entry level job applications, and grade school PTA contact lists. When negotiating large sums of money, or working confidential deals, a real professional has (or is provided) his/her own uniqueID@legitimatedomain.tld.
Free email is not a dealbreaker, but I will go straight to the phone instead. I will also not send proprietary files, nor trade secrets, to freemium addresses.
The simple solution to OP would be to spin up a hosting account and grant yourself a better email address, then setup filters+forwarding for important stuff on the address with issues, and stop giving it out. It's way easier to do than you may think, and a half decent hosting company will have you checking your new email account within minutes of DNS propagation.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
I have the same issue with my iCloud account. I use a first intial "dot" last name and frequently get people to who try to buy items or register new accounts with my email. They've even tried password resets and nearly gotten into the account according to a tech at apple. One time when someone ordered something on etsy, I just logged in to the newly created account and canceled the order.
That's the opposite of lucky. In doing that, you intentionally set yourself up as a spam honeypot. Gmail filtering may protect you from the worst of it, but the reality is such an address is likely being used by a lot of someones. That's the nature of email: when someone gets it, it becomes their email address.
Rethink that policy. We are long past the days when you can just use one email address as a universal identifier that you can "conveniently" give to anyone and everyone. It should be protected more like a SSN, and possibly even a password.
I would throw it out. If it was an address that was uniquely associated with a particular account, I would inform the company that they have been the victim of a data breach.
See i posted an article on Slashdot and everything see it is possible for someone else to use my email address to sign up for dating sites HAHAHAHAHAHHA What length would you go too to save your marriage? fake articles on a on the down slide tech site were you already knew the answer too or at least SHOULD know?
Jack of all trades,master of none
Probably happens about every month or two to me.
Usually, I just ignore it, or mark it as spam. Only once did I feel the need to do anything about it. In that case, the emails were coming from a school which had my email address down as one of the parents' and I figured that needed to be fixed so the parents didn't miss out on getting the info.
I've been in the same situation for quiet a while, with several people having used my address. I've managed to contact some of them and get them to quit...I can be convincing on the phone. Others, I've been unable to find, and it's annoying as hell when they're using some of the same services I use. I've tried contacting a few companies about it, and they generally won't do anything.
I've only gotten a bit nasty with one jackass who, after being asked not to, continued using it. Payback's a bitch when you have all their contact info.
Just another day in Paradise
Isn't it going to be 'country of gmail's TLD' ? Almost sure TOS means you agree to court cases being held on gmail's 'turf'
Really sorry about causing all the frustration. I don't like to use my real email when signing up for garbage web sites. I really didn't think 1234asdf@gmail.com was used. Cool name though.
I have a similarly simple email address. Here's what I did:
1st email is from a college student who though my email address was the address for her professor.
2nd email is from me, in reply to her. Interestingly, this was the 2nd email I received from a student in this prof's lab - apparently the prof mistakenly thought my email address was hers....
On Wed, May 31, 2017, 22:52 Charlotte DXXXXXX wrote:
Good afternoon Dr. KXXXXXXXX,
I am scheduled to be in your laboratory section 003 that corresponds to Organic Chemistry I. I made a huge error in reading my schedule and thought that our lab course met on Mondays as opposed to Wednesdays which caused me to miss today's lab. I am so, so, so sorry! This was a huge error on my part. I am emailing you today to see if there is any way I could either make up the lab or borrow data to write this week's report. I unfortunately work tomorrow from 8am to 6pm, but I would be more than willing to come in Friday or Monday or Tuesday of next week if I can. I have taken Organic Chemistry I before at the College of ChXXXXXXXXXXXXX and have done melting points and TLCs, so I have some background knowledge of the lab techniques used in those experiments.
Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help fix my situation. Again, I am so sorry for the inconvenience I caused!
Sincerely,
Charlotte DXXXXXXXXX
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: JonathanXXXXXXXXXXX
Date: Wed, May 31, 2017, 17:42
Subject: Re: Missed CHM211 Lab
To: Charlotte DXXXXXXXXXX
Dear Charlotte,
I am terribly sorry to hear that you missed my lab. Because you missed this class you will not have known that missing a class results in an automatic F. You can write a 40 page paper after making up your own lab, which will alleviate this consequence. Oherwise there's no point in coming to the rest of the classes.
By the way you have a wrong email address. I hope my humor has alleviated some of your stress over missing your class!
Jonathan in France
But not exactly in this way. My email, one of them, anyway, is my first and last name. There's a doctor who shares those names and for many years I got lots of emails that were his staff. Including patient records. One Christmas, I got a query about what should be done about staff gifts. I was really tired of getting emails from this office by that point, having politely told them they had the wrong guy. I wrote back, Fire them all. The good doctor diagnosed me as an asshole, correctly perhaps. But I stopped getting his emails. What was really worrisome was their sending patient records without any thought of security.
I've been having exactly the same problem for years. I've gotten porn site confirmations, job interview followups, background checks, even spam from their mortgage broker. How can people be so careless? Truly absurd and frustrating. My internet doppelgänger is an idiot.
Google states that firstnamelastname@gmail, and firstname.lastname@gmail.com, first.name.last.name@gmail.com are all the same address but this is simply not true.
i use firstname.middleinitial.lastname@gmail.com as my address, there is another person in Connecticut who uses firstnamemiddleinitiallastname@gmail.com and a third user in the UK with firstnamemiddleinitial.lastname@gmail.com and for the last several years we have basically been sharing the account between the three of us.
any punctuation in the username is ignored, any one of us can change the password and yet the other two can still log in with the password of their choice.
we have just gone to using separate folders for each of us and we've agreed to not pry into any personal messages we receive.
google denies this can happen even though all 3 of us have been in a conference call at the same time talking to googles techs.
Same issue, same reason- a very early gmail account. An additional issue you don't mention is that when your "clone" is in another region (I'm US, my clones are EU- one French, the other Italian) sometimes the sites are region blocked! I get daily emails from Deezer. But when I click the (french) unsubscribe button, I end up at their US site. Arg.
HA HA HA
I was very early and lucky to have registered my firstname@gmail.com. But I get an insane amount of spams, account activations, emails, chats, legal threats, anything you can name it! It was so bad that I stopped using it.
w00t
See above
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I have an email address, first initial and the first 7 letters of my last name, at gmail.
I've not been able to get a full count of how many people seem to use it at their own address...
There is at least one guy in europe, given the dating sites he signs up for he is gay.
Possibly the same guy gave his email to two ladies in the netherlands, who emailed me in dutch asking me to meet up with them at a club in amsterdam... I politely declined pointing out that the commute from Minneapolis was a bit much for a night out on the town... I did so in english (google translate to find out what they said)
One woman in california who gave it to a future employer, who then, without confirmation, sent me the link to the form, the user name and the password, to go setup direct deposit.
At least one person who gets monthly updates about the going on's in their church.
And my favorite so far has been the ongoing saga of laser installation in a lab at indiana university... the safety inspector needs to inspect the lasers, they need to have some sort of sheath I guess... any how it's been nearly a year and a dozen emails so far... I can't wait to find out what is next.
Oh and recently one shipping confirmation of a cooler order that was being delivered to indiana... was tempted to change the delivery address on that one...
Receipts from home depot (they used a military discount)...
The list just goes on for ever...
I sign into and delete any accounts that send me more than one email...
and send emails back to any people who contact me, (except the laser thing... I want to see how that one plays out).
And take solace in the fact that if a leak from one of those cheat on your spouse websites gets out and my email is on there, I can just show my wife the myriad of crap I get signed up for without my consent.
I got lucky when I signed up for gmail and it was invite only. I got "FirstnameLastname at gmail". Over the years I've received information from Drs, lawyers, vets of other people trying contact someone with the same name. I just politely inform them they have the wrong Firstname, and let them know I am destroying the email. One time I got a minor league baseball player's agent emailing me back and forth thinking their client was messing with them.
If I were a malicious person all the personal health and contact info I get on a weekly basis could be used to ill will. I do the nice, fair thing and let people know, and delete the emails out of the trash. It's how I would want my info handled by someone else. By the way Firstname, I am glad your DogSpecies was confirmed non-rabid. A joyous day for the three of us!
I had that happen with a shopping service in the Philippines. I sent several emails to the company with no results. So I changed the password and then realized they shipped the orders COD. So i ordered a really expensive dress. A couple days later I got 10 password reset requests and finally an email from the cpmpany sayoing the account had been closed. I never even saw a picture of how he looked in that beautiful red silk dress.
I wouldn't worry about it. So long as you don't rob them anyhow.
The person had the same username as mine, but a Hotmail account. I just realized it after I called the person via Skype, and told that I was constantly getting his very personal e-mails. He noticed the mistake, and apparently became more attentive when providing it to people.
I have the same problem. Some person has used my email address to sign up for NRA mailings, and nothing I do can unsubscribe me from them. Especially given that the NRA apparently creates new mailing lists fo reach mailing since, when I click the unsubscribe link, it's always for a different list name.
One time I got the guy's NRA member ID, and tried to get his password so I could unsubscribe. You only need the member ID and last name to get the password sent to you. But apparently his last name (the email address is my last name) is something else according to the failure message I get on the passwor recovery form...
It truly sucks.
Reverse Identity Theft ... perfect
https://xkcd.com/1279/
What legal advice? lol
Someone registering an account with my email basically means that the account is mine, given the realities of how email resets work. Tough luck for them if they want to use it.
I pity the poor guy with the email address "foo@example.com".
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Somebody in Georgia thinks my Yahoo address is his. I've gotten musician newsletters, Olan Mills photography appointment reminders, grocery store and GameStop rewards accounts, emails from his daughter, various sports/gaming sites that don't have a reputation for spamming, and a Fedex delivery confirmation.
Yeah, "Fedex delivery confirmation" is one of the most common phishing scams on the Internet, but this one was legit; from Fedex IP addresses, and an actual delivery of specific merchandise to a specific address. Not "Print the attached notice and bring it to your local FedEx office". (How to people think that could even work, anyway?) I put a printout of that in an envelope and mailed it to him, since his snail-mail address was on the delivery notice.
The "email from his daughter" ones, looked very grammar-school, kids at school calling her names, things a third-grader might be expected to email her dad. Those, I just replied to with a "This is not your father's email address. Let him know; I have other email of his that I can forward to him." Never got a response that addressed the content of my replies in any way. Maybe "she" was an FBI agent trolling for pedophiles? No clue there, but after half a dozen or so of those, they stopped.
Anything that looks legit, I've unsubscribed, or sent them an email saying they have the wrong email address.
Whoever it is, they have never responded to any of my attempts to get in touch with them.
Out of the numbers of GMAIL users, some portion of people will use the same email address and coincidentally use same password, ending up in a shared mailbox experience. Then there's amnesia, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, etc.
I like to "reply," especially "reply all" when available with a random photo and no text. My favorite photos to reply with are one of the close up shots of a scar from a recent surgery. People usually reply back very concerned, which I never respond to. I always wonder how my firstname.lastname@gmail.com doppelgänger reacts when eventually confronted by these concerned acquaintances.
My Gmail address is also used by some Australian who seems to be a freshly minted adult. Whenever they sign up for dating, or any other business site, I go to the site, click "forgot password," change it, unsubscribe from everything, disable the account/profile, and then flag it as "Spam" in Gmail. If they get a personal email, I ignore it the first time, and if I receive a second email, I respond with a message that I'm not the person they're trying to contact and flag it as spam.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Years ago, I opened a PO box in San Francisco, and the previous occupant of that box was an international organization of a suicide advocacy group. At first, I would write "wrong address" or "attempted not known" on the envelopes and return them to the postal counter. Inevitably, it would go right back into my PO box again. And they got TONS and TONS of mail. Some of the mail I could see through the envelopes that there were actually checks in them. So I tried to get in touch with the actual organization (although their contact was my PO box). I found a phone number and tried to contact them, but the person I spoke to had to be the rudest person I'd ever spoken to. I tried to explain that I had TONS of mail for them, including a lot of it that was most likely checks for their books and product information. Guy was nothing but hostile. So I dumped everything into the trash for the many months that this stuff kept coming to me. I can only imagine how much money they threw down the toilet because their customer service person was someone who just hated people.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
The best email I ever got: a woman who thought I was a plastic surgeon, and wanted a boob job for her teenage daughter. And one for herself. And a vaginoplasty. I kid you not.
You should have offered an in-home consultation - for a fee.
1) Change your email address;
2) Sign up for all kind of crap, including offensive porn, using your old email address.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.