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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?
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.
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've heard of people having this problem, but I still don't understand the issue.
If my e-mail address is johnsmith@gmail.com why would somebody else use that address, other than deliberately fucking with me (e.g., sign me up for a bunch of shit that I don't want)?
Are there people so completely brain dead that they don't know what their e-mail address is, so they just use name@gmail.com and think that it will actually work?
With Gmail you can use the name johnsmith@gmail.com or john.smith@gmail.com (usually an earlier adopter) and email will go to both users even though they are different email addresses. For some reason, Gmail does not honor the "dot" in a users name. The email standard allows for upper and lower case in a user name but actually ignores the "case" which when you think about it is a safe way of interpreting a user name.
BTW. While it is possible to for email to interpret upper and lower case doing this would cause chaos since a user could have a name say "JohnSmith" or "JOHNSMITH" or any combination. Mistype but still using the same letters and you should get the picture, however, if a "dot" or a number is put in a user name as in "john.smith" or "john1smith" those are different to a "johnsmith" user name.
This is incorrect, Gmail does not allow and has never allowed two addresses to be registered that differ only by a dot. See https://support.google.com/mail/answer/10313?hl=en
This does not go to court. It goes to ICANN arbitration. And unless it is a valid complaint, it will just get rejected directly.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.