Someone keeps using my email address. WWYD?

[InaccurateDream]

Someone keeps using my very boring firstname lastname icloud account.

I know it sounds like a minor irritation but it's more than just spam. Eg they bought loads of stuff at Walmart using the address so I was getting order confirmation, order dispatch, order arrived emails, product reminder emails etc. It's at least 'medium annoying!'

I'm getting loads of insurance emails, lots of Fox Nation ones. And it's all the same person so not spam as such, but purposeful activity.

Last year she bought flights using my email. I could see her full name, address, names of her children and even had access to cancel the flight.

I got in touch with the place where she bought it and asked them to take the account down. They did - until the next time.

She's just bought a new flight (short internal US flight)! I can cancel it in one click. I'm really tempted to - what would you do?

There was a US phone number in the booking details so I have messaged it (it was on imessage) and asked them to stop using my email address please (I was nice). I sent a follow up saying I would cancel the flight in the morning.

Message has been delivered but not read. Of course that could be fake too.

I can't find her on social media/Facebook. Though I have messaged someone who could be her son.

I just don't know if it's laziness, stupidity, maliciousness. Probably the first. But it's making me grumpy when I think about it (which is only when I get a new email with all her details in it!).

Would deleting her flight be a step too far?

(have changed username for this thread)

@sueelleker

Sometimes I get a reply to say thank you, which I don't expect and is very nice. What I don't appreciate is when the sender replies and has a go at me for THEIR mistake!! That's like someone phoning a wrong number and complaining that the other person answered the phone!

I have, as I am sure have many others, had this exact experience in relation to both phone and e-mail errors.

I had a woman on the phone who was convinced I was a carpet shop and wouldn't accept that we are not.

I got told off by a Canadian woman who sent me confidential company accounting information for suggesting they might be more careful with their company's data.

YANBU, but I don’t think I’d cancel her flight tempting as it is. I have so many emails from people who don’t know their email addresses. Wedding planning, caterers, flights, Texan dog hotel, The Great North Run all for my namesakes. If I get one I can’t unsubscribe to from the U.K. I end up dumping it in junk and it can delete itself from there.

My Mum also has [email protected] had a corker the other day, she had someone send an entire payroll with an entire companies staff details (everything - addresses, DOB, NI Nos, tax codes etc) to her. Thankfully she is an ex payroll manager so ripped the sender a new one and told the company. She’s also reported it to the information commissioner, as a data breach. Can you imagine how much damage someone could have done with that info? How people cannot use email and put down email addresses properly in 2021 still shocks me.

I have this with a woman in Australia, I think her email is supposed to have @hotmail.com.au and mine doesn't have the .au at the end. I've emailed her twice over the years to let her know but never had a reply.
I was getting loads of emails from her kids school so knew their names, teachers names, the fact that they were late returning books to the library . I could see her husband/children's dad's email so emailed them both to let them know. No response from either. Happened a few more times so next time I got an email from the principal, I emailed him and let him know. He was obviously a little panicked that they were giving out so much info about the children but sorted that part out so at least I don't get anything from the school.
I just ignore the rest now but I sometimes get slightly snotty emails from people who she has 'ignored'...I delete those emails too...

@MoiraNotRuby

Sounds annoying, but rather than cancel the flight can you change any of her info to say 'wrong email' in whatever fields you can edit? I reckon her phone/computer is auto filling with the wrong one for this to be happening so often. I bet she's not even typing it in.

That’s what I thought, she’s put it in wrong once and then her phone is auto filling…

I have this!!!! A lawyer in the USA! So much for data protection eh. I delete accounts and change passwords. So bloody annoying!

I have this ALL the time. I logged into a Netflix account set up with my address and changed the password ;) I've had confidential emails about social/ carer work, been signed up to someone's church email in America, someone's debt management subscription, I even had a guy contact me once to tell me our relationship was over! Most recently someone tried to use my address for Only Fans... These are all different people. I don't have a common name so no idea why I get this so much.

She may well have all her details saved in her browser with your email instead of her own and so artfully the wrong email each time. It’s not an excuse though.

Once you’ve done what you can to contact her, if it continued I would consider (when possible) each time logging in, canceling what I could and changing the password so she couldn’t reuse the account. Remove any of her details that I could and then just leave it dormant.

The fox thing is annoying. Do you have access to a VPN with your antivirus or anything? They can often be set to go via another country. I think there’s also a Chrome extension that does, if you can be bothered.

I have sympathy at first when this sort of thing happens, but when people keep doing it, that sympathy evaporates. I’ve received a fair amount of mail meant for a Number Theory who is a freelancer in the U.K. I normally respond to the sender pointing out I’m the wrong Number Theory and they adjust. One did not despite me telling her many times. She seemed to coordinate projects that Number Theory worked on quite a lot and was sending stuff as part of a group email that was sent to lots of others on the project and I was getting all their replies too. The last project she did this with I just replied all with a shouty message naming her, pointing out that I had informed her many times and saying that it was beyond unprofessional to be sending me all this confidential client data again and again. Never happened again. Normally just letting people know works great and they are more than happy to get it right. Very occasionally you need to add more incentive.

Nice to know I'm not the only one who has logged in and changed a password that's been erroneously linked to my email address 😂 I always hope it will prompt them to change it and then they'll realise they've used the wrong
email address.

@Orgasmagorical

I could see her full name, address, names of her children

I'd be sorely tempted to send her one of these round robin letters with a Christmas card this year - asking her if she enjoyed her flight to Wherever on Such and Such a date; how were Eenie and Meenie, was Miny sick again?; is she still using the [cheap crap] she bought from Walmart, she'll not be needing to up her insurance policies with Insurance is Us.com buying that kind of tat. You could have hours of fun

You should.

It may finally make her change her email

I cause no end of trouble with mine - I'm [email protected]; Essential.Hummus gets my mail occasionally.

It's very common indeed for people to spell out 'dot' when giving out their email addresses online, to avoid bots picking them up and adding them to mailing/spam/scam lists. It would be like giving your phone number as 'zero7123 123four56', to make sure that only an actual human can interpret it. I assume you weren't aware of that, but that's what will be causing it - not somebody making a mistake but people assuming that you're using a basic security protocol.

Where gmail is concerned, I bet it also messes up their own databases, as they scan all of your emails for data mining and advertising purposes. Their algorithms won't know that the messages are intended for two different, unknown people, so they'll just merge all of the data that they have on both of you together.

Intrusive enough when it is just you using your email, AFAIC, but effectively, in cyberspace, you have been assigned an indistinguishable connection with this stranger. If they got up to something criminal and communicated with other criminals online (or bought dodgy stuff online/went on the dark web), it could potentially have very 'interesting', even Kafkaesque consequences for you.

I've joined a FB group local to her and enquired (nicely) with no success yet but lots of responses.

I've also asked the airline if they can ring her. As I've already been in touch with her via (unread) text message, I won't write to her now, but I will the next time I get an email meant for her.

Unlikely to be any more updates now sadly!

I normally respond to the sender pointing out I’m the wrong Number Theory and they adjust. One did not despite me telling her many times.

The amount of times I've politely replied to the sender to say I'm not the person they are trying to contact, and they reply saying 'well that's the address you gave me!'
facepalm

Sometimes I get a reply to say thank you, which I don't expect and is very nice. What I don't appreciate is when the sender replies and has a go at me for THEIR mistake

Oh I've had this when I've contacted businesses to tell them they have the wrong (postal) address and they claim they can't change something "because of data protection". I've had to get quite cross and say that it's a data breach to send stuff for someone else to me, and if I get any more crap from them I'll be reporting them for harassment and would they like to make the change or pass me to their manager right now. That said, I bet they can't even access the records now unless you are the actual person and know the password so goodness know what you do.

I hadn't realised so many people had this issue.

There is a lady out there in America whose email is close to mine.

So if mine was [email protected] hers is [email protected]

I have been getting her emails for over 10 years, again, early adopter of that particular email system...

I have had, details of property she is wanting to rent, car purchase details, car service details, invitations to church pot luck picnics, details of her daughters dance lessons, banking details for her church's bank account, passwords for church related stuff, schedules for kids activities, church stuff..

I had a fairly long exchange with her brother and her father after her brother started sending me emails about his Mormon trip abroad where they do a couple of years overseas bothering people about The Lord and the good book... even after I mentioned that im a raging atheist, they seem nice...

But she remains incapable of writing her email address down correctly or ensuring people do not make the mistake of missing out her middle initial.

It is infuriating at times, I have lost track of the number of people I have had to write back to because the email seemed pretty important or contained personal or sensitive information (I could have emptied their church bank account!) - I have spoken to her on facebook, our name isn't even the name she goes by as she has since married and goes by a different surname but doesn't seem to want to give up the email address everyone gets wrong.

I can see why it gets a bit infuriating having to do someone elses admin and sort out their error repeatedly - I have been tempted to cancel kids dance lessons or cancel car service, or agree to a date to see a new rental property which she'd obviously not know about and so not show up for... but I have resisted!

I may signed up as a volunteer at a State Fair in Utah due to being so pissed off at my namesake.

I'm amazed by the number of people who have this problem, I thought I was alone. I've been getting the odd email for a lady in the West Midlands with the same name as me for over ten years now. Emails from her friends with gossip, work emails, job interviews, house sales....even once a friend who sent her all her passport details and that of her family so that me-not-me could check them in early on a flight they were taking together. I used to reply to say they had the wrong email address but nobody ever replied. Now I just bin the emails, they don't come through regularly enough for me to do anything other than that now. If the woman was that bothered she would sort it.

I had this for years, my email address was InitialSurname@gmail but I got so many emails meant for other people including banking info, shopping orders and travel details. In the end I deactivated the account as it was just too annoying!

no help but this EXACT thing is happening to me. First name last name gmail and its someone in america with my exact same name - i get emails from things shes bought, emails from her relatives which i have to reply back to and say sorry wrong email or i'd feel guilty knowing the email never reached them.

I have replied several times and said "please could you let the person know they keep giving out the wrogn email address" and yet the emails continue....

I have even emailed the companies that the emails have come from and they've not been able to help me.

The free vouchers for things come in handy though....

I get this too. My surname is unusual on my gmail account and I think people just assume it's available and sign up to things with it, thinking they can claim it later.

It's always Americans. I've had someone in New York's Uber receipts, so I could see exactly where they go. I've had someone in Chicago emailing me the pay rise details for their company for approval and sending appraisal documents to me. There's also the midwest person who I receive receipts for their horse feed purchases, and the person in Texas whose water and trash collection contracts I get.

My DH eventually abandoned his gmail account. The naming system in the bit of India that his family originates from is bonkers and as a result there are thousands and thousands of men with the same name. DH was an early adopter so had the firstname.surname account and it got to the stage that hardly any of the emails were for him. The majority were for a popular YouTube preacher of the same name as DH. Now DH uses his company email for everything as he's the only one of his name in the company.

I have this but with a mobile number. Inhad years of this woman giving her my number (that I've had for over 30 years) to her relatives, kids' schools, farrier (no, I don't have a horse, really I don't, I think I would remember), garage, work - but then she got ill and the calls and messages came from her work colleagues and doctor... and then then stopped. Either she finally got the hint - I was blunt with her doctor - or she died.

I have two gmail addresses and I have it with both. The first one, is my name + surname initial. There is a woman with a very similar name who works as a radio producer, so I get all these emails intended for her - (embargoed) news about new music releases, info about where to collect my backstage pass for some awards show (pre-covid), and the best one, an excel sheet with the personal phone numbers of dozens and dozens of celebrities.

My other email address is apparently similar to that of a hippy in the US. I regularly get emails from his friends asking if he knows where they can get some weed...

I have exactly the same problem - but I have 2 people using my address! One in the States, one here in the Midlands. I've had the address for years, the 2 additions came a few years ago. I've emailed them both to tell them I can see all their details and to please stop using it. They have both ignored me, so now I delete anything that isn't mine, and unsubscribe / send to junk mail. It's infuriating but nothing seems to stop it!

Why would you even think about cancelling someone’s flights over this? It’s no big deal is it, I mean just delete the emails like all the other crap you get emailed.
If it bothers you that much then send a letter explaining the situation.
I don’t get how it can be laziness, it’s obviously an error, maybe she has another email address similar and making a mistake, could be anything but this is such an over reaction.

Same happened to me within an iCloud account. Someone with a very similar email to mine (ie. if mine is aab21@icloud, his is abb21@icloud) set up a PayPal account using my email address. I got all his PayPal notifications - mainly for Air BnB bookings.
I could have logged in, changed his password and spent using his account. I didn’t, obviously.
After contacting PayPal to notify them that I could access another user’s account and getting nowhere there wasn’t much I could do because at that point the only email address I had for him was mine!
Eventually he must have realised and added a new email address to his PayPal which I received notification of so I was able to contact him using it to ask him to completely remove mine. He didn’t! After another month of getting all his notifications, I basically had to threaten him with locking him out of his account before he finally fixed it.