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?

Comments

Re:Reverse the role

[Anonymous Coward]

Better to reset their password, log into whatever site they signed up for and trash their shit. I once did that to some dumb ass who used my email address for his social media account. Apparently he had the account for quite a while, had an extensive "friends" list and a lot of activity on his blogwall, meaning that he had changed his linked email address to mine only recently.

I reset his password, logged in (via proxy) and posted announcements all over his page saying that he was coming out of the closet and he was a homosexual who really loved to suck cock. I "unfriended" all of his "friends" and left nasty messages on their blogwalls telling them that they were bitches and how I (as him) never liked them. Even got a couple of puzzled responses wondering why I was being so weird, LOL! In the end, I just closed down his account. It was hilarious while it lasted though.

By the way BarbraHudsen, what do you look like? Are you one of those hella mannish trannies or do you look like a lady, but just with a penis? You got any pics?

Re:Reverse the role

[Anonymous Coward]

he's the kind who thinks his 'vagina' is real.

Re:Reverse the role

[Anonymous Coward]

There are people brain dead enough to think they can simply change their sex with an operation and hormones too.

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[Chris Mattern]

Yeah, you definitely need to be cutting back on the caffeine, there.