For changing the password

[Phenolet]

Someone in the United States has been using my email address for their Arbonne account (I'm pretty sure it's a multi level marketing company).

Every once in a while I get emails confirming their order of vitamin sachets and grooming products. It doesn't really bother me as it's only this one company, it's not like this person uses my email address for everything.

Today however, I decided to log in to that person's account and change the password after another email confirming order. I figured they wouldn't be able to log in and then they'd have to open up a new account using their own email address.

However, I now feel bad about it. I was petty and should have just left it. As I said, it's not as if it's a huge inconvenience to me.

What do you think? Was I unreasonable and mean for doing this?

I have several name doppelgängers all over the world who inadvertently use my email address. One has become a long distance friend as a result!

It’s definitely frustrating at times, but I usually reply to emails where possible to advise of their mistake and unsubscribe or block things obviously not meant for me where there is nothing else to be done. Inevitably someone somewhere is still missing information that they need from time to time, but I’m not going to make it worse by going into accounts and changing passwords.

On one occasion, like a PP has mentioned, someone’s mobile number was included on an order confirmation and I texted them and told them what they’d done and that it needed to stop. On another, I was getting payslips from a payroll system for someone working for a church in Australia. It was a no-reply email address, but I looked up the diocese and emailed their enquiries address to ask them to check the details with the intended recipient urgently. I never got acknowledgment but the emails stopped.

Well people seem fine with the OP's actions so...

My hairdressers had tied my email address to a different client so I unsubscribed from their emails (got married so now have another email address). I had tried to tell them

And why do you think that is? 🤔

I don't see why this was necessary. You already knew where they live, presumably from the order confirmations. Seems like the simplest course of action would have been to - shock, horror - send a handwritten physical note to that address outlining the problem. It's only a couple of days, even transatlantic! Contacting them on social media is much less certain since your dm is likely to go into a junk message folder.

All the best

Having hacked into the strangers account, OP would have presumably also had their contact number and could have contacted them in seconds.

Mate. They're neck deep in the scamtastic pyramid scheme known as Arbonne. The OP has done them a favour.

Chatting shit as usual I see

That is not up to the OP to decide that. She could actually be quite higher up in the scheme and this is a regular and stable income for her. OP could have potentially blocked her wages, right before Christmas.

I think you've done the right thing, I'd suggest that rather than giving her the password though, you ask her to give you her email address, then you change it and the password, then give the account back to her. Otherwise you run the risk of her just carrying on again.

How is it "chatting shit" to suggest someone should have unsubscribed from an email instead of hacking into someone's account?

She won't be able to unsubscribe from the email without closing the Arbonne (or whatever it is) account, which will be far more annoying for this person than what OP has done

Yeah right. You're getting desperate now. Everyone knows that 98% plus of people in a MLM make nothing.

So what's more likely, she;s one of the 1-2%, or one of the 98-99%? Professional girl boss right there, not even able to create her account with the right email address.

The scammy Arbonne woman is at fault here. SHE signed up with the OP's email address and has been logging into her account using the OP's email. OP has forced her into action.

You don't know that, neither does the OP, and neither do I. For all we know this stranger could know a solid base of customers in her local area that are pleased and happy to buy the products on a regular basis without all the aggressive tactics needing to be used.

This is all based on what the other poster said anyway, the OP clearly did not do what she did to stop this stranger from being in a MLM and I am not accusing her of that.

I get all sorts using my email addresses. I was an early adopter of email and have some very distinctive (and desirable) ones.

I've also now totally lost patience especially with the idiots who use my .com ending instead of their own .ca and have locked more than one out of their gaming accounts. I've also received sensitive financial and personal information. It's lucky for more than one individual that I am not criminally minded.

Currently, I have one who is attempting to register a FB account using my gmail account Sadly for him/her I get the request to validate emails and I don't. Next time I just might...

It’s not possible to unsubscribe from order confirmations which are classed as essential communications. This isn’t a newsletter it’s the email address that is associated with an account holder. If you’re not capable of basic reading/comprehension of opening posts may I suggest you slow down in your relentless mission to spaff your opinions over every post in active threads?

Rather than technically invading their privacy by hacking and amending their account details, possibly causing unnecessary concern... could you not have just spent even less time typing an email to the company advising you aren't a customer and asking them to contact the customer in question to verify their correct account details.

I've had it before with different companies, it's easily done in the modern age and easily corrected without being as childish as you were.

Firstly, it's not up to you to dictate how other people post.

Secondly, the OP could have easily blocked the address which would have sent them to spam.

This.

Ultimately Arbonne should have confirmed the email before use but A LOT of organisations don't and it's an enormously irritating problem when someone puts YOUR email in! It's not as if it does them any good either. And there's no standard way of getting it resolved! Maddening.

Secondly, the OP could have easily blocked the address which would have sent them to spam

Lots of unsubscribe options only unsubscribe you from marketing emails, not order confirmations or dispatch notifications

It's not fraud! Somebody is using the OP's email address so she's taken steps to stop it happening.

Mind you it might not be deliberate on the other person's part. Both my mum and my DH get emails all the time for other people. It seems to be something about how email services recognise email addresses and they might send peter.smith emails for petersmith (or similar). It's the fault of the email services in that case.

I wasn't talking about unsubscribing in the post you replied to, I was talking about blocking the address entirely

Yes this is a good point. Anyway, blocking the email address wouldn't resolve the issue that the emails are going to the wrong place, would it - why would you do that?