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

Reverse the role

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Reverse the role

[BarbaraHudson]

Why bother. Just mark it as spam. Eventually they'll need to reset their password or otherwise confirm their identity, and fail. If they ever contact you when they realize their mistake, mark that as spam too. They'll be like the protagonist in "I have no mouth and I must scream." Never heard again.

Re: Reverse the role

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Reverse the role

[gweihir]

That may make you look pretty stupid when they file a criminal complaint against you. The proxy does not help, or have you forgotten that they have your email address?

I have a similar problem

[sombragris]

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.

Re:I have a similar problem

[BarbaraHudson]

GMail treats embedded dots in the name portion as identical to the name without the embedded dot. my.name@example.org is the same as myname@example.org. Check (1) that the tld is identical - gmail.es (spain) isn't the same as gmail.py. (paraguay). Also check that the characters in the name portion really are identical, and not just appearing so in your browser because of font substitution. One way to do this is reply to it and see if the reply goes to you as well. If not, then the local parts are not in fact the same, even if they look the same on your system.

Also, standard fonts allow lots of substitutions that look the same but aren't. For example, BankOfArnerica is NOT the same as BankOfAmerica. The first one is spam bait (if you can't see the difference, cut-n-paste it into an editor and select fixed-width font).

Re:I have a similar problem

[LostOne]

I think you'll find this turns out *not* to be true. What is significant in the "local part" of the email address is *up to the local system* as long as it is in the set of characters that are permitted. Of course, Google (and anyone else for that matter) is perfectly allowed to ignore dots in the local part. But everyone is also perfectly allowed to treat them as significant.

Also, your wiki link does not back up your assertion that "A.BC" and "ABC" must be the same mailbox. It only gives rules on where a dot can appear unquoted in the local part. It does not say that it is to be ignored when routing.

Additionally, decades of operational practice on the Internet also directly violates your assertion. Dots have *always* been potentially significant for a local part. They were required for compuserve addresses back in the beginning, for instance.

NOTE: I am NOT saying that Google is doing things wrong. What they are doing is allowed. They are free to interpret the local part however they want. However, they are NOT required to ignore dots.

It's probably not one person.

[mellon]

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.

Obligatory XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.xkcd.com/1279/

Take over!

[mhkohne]

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.

Cash in

[Nkwe]

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.

I use President@whitehouse.gov

[jfdavis668]

Four administrations now, and the Secret Service hasn't called me yet.

Happened to me, too

[AtariDatacenter]

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.

Tips.

[blubdog]

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.

Ditto. There's nothing you can do

[seoras]

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...

Autocomplete compounds the problem

[Chuck Chunder]

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.

Re:Reset the password on the accounts.

[ShaunC]

Yes, exactly. I have the same problem with my Gmail account. Over the years many hundreds of people have mistaken it for their email address, distributed it far and wide, and entered it into all sorts of things. Sometimes I just let it go, especially if a site only sends one "thanks for registering" email. I hit delete and move on. But if the service is a particularly spammy one, I'll use the "forgot password" link, login, change the password, turn off all email-related options, etc.

I used to look for an option to delete the account entirely, but that invariably led to the same people signing back up for the same services again. Occasionally I'll try to do the other guy a favor and tell the sender that they have the wrong address. It usually isn't worth the effort. Someone has a Royal Bank of Scotland account registered to my email and no amount of emailing, filling out their contact form, or tweeting at them ever did any good so I just filtered that domain out.

Not much you can do about people sending random unsolicited communications, though. I've received some really interesting misdirected mail over the years, including some stuff from the European Space Agency, and being cc'd on an NFL player's contract negotiations with a new team.

Re: Reset the password on the accounts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear needlessly promiscuous 47 year old monkey

My name is Barrister j.c.don a Legal practitioner and member of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and Institute of International Affairs in my country.

I am forwarding this proposal to you out of the intuitive confidences I have about you and your ability to assist in the executtion of a certain straightforward transaction.

The transaction involves a cash investment of the sum of US$40,500,000.00 (Forty Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) in Estate business or buying of shares in a strong reliable company in your country. The investment will be under your supervision, control and on behalf of my client, a former Military Governor of a State in Nigeria during the immediate past Military Regime. As a result of a very personal and political reason, he has decided to maintain anonymity for now pending a confirmation of your willingness to assist and co-operate in execution of the project....