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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?
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.
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.
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/
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.
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.
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 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 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
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.
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.
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
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
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!
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.
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.
Could be email@address.com
I use that one all the time.
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 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
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?
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).
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.
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.
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.
Babs, are you a schoolteacher perchance?
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.
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.
Is what Hired Hackers and Darkweb Hitmen are FOR! :-) J/K!
'Aye'??? What does that mean, eh?
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.
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.
That's not how spam filters work. I think you're frustrated because you don't know how shit works.
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
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!)
Indeed. I run my own mail server, but if I were not, I would still pay for an account and probably a domain for my email.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
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
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...
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.