I've just been sent bus tickets from Amsterdam to Berlin - didn't order them?!

[Hackalert]

Suspicious goings on with my Gmail account. An email came through yesterday from CityBus Europe asking me to continue my booking that I had started for a trip from Amsterdam to Berlin in December. I have been no where near ANY site looking for travel by any means to anywhere in the last 3 months so this was news to me. It don't think I have made a coach booking this entire century! It asked me to click on a button to confirm the booking so I did what you would normally do in these circumstances and just deleted the email.

Later last night I received an email confirming my trip on Dec 21st with PDFs of the tickets attached. The email said it had been booked by [email protected] (obviously I'm not using my real email address here!) and there was a mobile telephone number quoted that was supposed to be mine but was unknown to me. I didn't click on the PDFs but immediately went into a frenzy of looking at my bank accounts and PayPal accounts to see if there were any payments for bus tickets or any strange payments at all. Thankfully there weren't.

I then went and changed the passwords on my bank accounts, paypal accounts, my yahoo accounts and my hackalert gmail account and my amazon account before any damage could be done.

This morning I go to log on to my hackalert gmail account on my phone and it had disappeared off my options of accounts to log into. Only my student gmail account was there. I then tried on my laptop and my gmail didn't open. I am now completely paranoid thinking that someone has actually stolen my gmail account. I phoned my partner and asked him to try and log into the account (using the new password I set up last night - he's trustworthy and we've been together 25 years don' t worry!) He could find it no problem.

I then came out of my gmail completely and the Chrome browser on my laptop. I then found my gmail account and had to manually add back in my hackalert@gmail. account - so now I can see it.

I have spent all morning changing millions of passwords. I was guilty of using the same one for many of my accounts (I know, I know) and have changed ones that weren't the same.

But now I am in a loop of paranoia thinking that whoever has been dicking around with my gmail account can somehow access all these changes of password I've been making.

Is there anything else I should be doing. Should I contact Citybus about the tickets and alert them to the fact that my email address has been used fraudulently or are they part of the whole hack and I'll just be getting in deeper?

I'm feeling vulnerable and thick!

My first thought is that someone has accidentally mis-spelt their email address and ended up with yours.
I am obviously naive...

I don't think you need to worry so much, sounds like you have taken adequate precautions by changing the passwords. I bet someone has just mistyped their own email address when buying the bus tickets.

I didn't think of a mistype. it's a daft email address that has no relation to my real name at all. I suppose it could be a genuine mistake but then why had this email address just disappeared off my options to log into? For about 8 years when I've gone to log onto to my email account I can see the little symbol for my student account and my little symbol for my 'hacked' account and I just toggle between them. How strange that it had just disappeared I had to set it up all over again?!

I'm sure I'm not alone in getting the odd strange email that I just think 'that looks dodgy - delete'. I do remember getting a couple with NL addresses which is obviously Holland, and now this Dutch bus ticket.

Hopefully it's nothing too sinister and I have changed all my important passwords. How the hell I am going to remember them all I don't know!!!

My 80: year old disabled Mum got an email following up on her boob job from a private clinic
After much (hilarity and ) panicking about being hacked I contacted the clinic and they had put 1 wrong number in the email address it wasn’t meant for my Mum at all.
Could be a similar thing? Good idea to change passwords etc anyway just in case

I’m guessing someone in the Netherlands has a very similar email address. A colleague of mine has a doppelgänger in The USA and she gets all sorts of mail about her, wedding planning, payslips, tax info, bills. She’s tried telling her but to no avail!

Card fraud? But you've done the right things by changing passwords immediately. I'd also notify your band / card company just in case. They may want to issue you a new card.

Clearly a mistype

It could be a fraudulent spam ( you click confirm thinking its booked and theres a link in the email to refund the money and it actually gets your details)
Or someone has mistakenly got your email thinking its theres.
My dh set up a new email and he randomly got an email to random sites that hes never even been on.
I once got an email regarding a barge booking

Theirs*

Doesn't gmail have a tendency to ignore random punctuation marks? So someone could legitimately have AnnieOH@gmail, someone then emails that address but adds Annie.OH and gmail routes to AnnieOH. Then someone comes along and creates Annie.OH and all hell breaks loose?

Gmail tells you when someone logs in to your email from a different device.

At least it used to.

Could the Gmail log in thing this morning be because you changed the password yesterday? So maybe you had select a 'remember me' style option in order for it the hackaccount to be available for easy toggling?

Think you are right to be suspicious though and it's good that you changed your passwords. I'm a bit surprised by everyone who is assuming it's a typo mistake rather than a hack - or maybe I'm just paranoid!

When you change a Gmail password, you have to "add" it back on to your Gmail accounts again, even though it was previously associated - nothing sinister, OP (also happens when you clear out cookies and cache)

Someone in the US uses my email instead of hers - I know that she was kicked out of university and is now on Tinder (possibly the two aren't connected ). Was slightly tempted to click on Tinder and start swiping... (Her university, I emailed every fucking time, over the course of years: clearly, they didn't give a shit, so personally, I think she's well shot of them )

Contact CitiBus and see what they say? Some poor person is probably emailing them trying to sort out where their tickets are.

Could you try and log onto the CitiBus website with your email address?

Just phone the number on the ticket pdf and tell the person with the similar emails address to yours that they’ve given the wrong address You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.

Hopefully I am making a mountain out of a molehill but it’s common sense advice to never open an attachment or click on links that are sent in unsolicited emails surely? Anyway they’ve picked on the wrong person if they’re hoping to make some money because I don’t have any 😄

Just contact Citybus and ask them, have you googled the phone number?

I’ve sent City us an email so hopefully the tickets will be sent to the right recipient. I suppose it’s meant I’ve changed all my passwords which is a good thing to do quite regularly I believe.

I have two doppelgängers, one in Milford Haven and one in the USA. I get all sorts of stuff including rotes for parent helpers at the school in the USA (I did offer to bake but was a bit concerned that posting the cakes might not be a great idea!!). I also had Amazon, PayPal and eBay accounts opened with my email address (all the companies were great at closing them down).

I have however set up two part authentication on lots of my accounts. It means they send you a code by text or whatever when you logon via a different device or location. It's quite reassuring and an extra step beyond your password to stop unauthorised access.