stolen email address?

[var123]

Hope someone can help... I have a gmail address that doesn't use my name. I've had it for at least 5 years and I use it most days.

Recently I started to get facebook notifications to confirm the new account for someone in Asia who had given my address. I assumed they'd mis-typed so I told facebook that I didn't recognise the account and thought that was it.

Then today, I tried to setup skype using the gmail address but I couldn't because someone has already used my gmail address to setup an account (and they have a microsoft account using my email address too).

All I know is that they speak arabic (because that's the language in which microsoft emailed me).

Does anyone know how I can go about reclaiming my email address - I can still log in and use it across google, android etc? I'd really like to be able to use it for skype too.

Or is there a way of checking to see what other accounts my email address has been used to set up?

I changed the password 3 times in the last month, so I can't see how they have hacked in.

Have a look here:
support.google.com/mail/answer/45938?hl=en and check that they are not actually using your account. This is v v important. If they are actually in your account there is advice at the bottom of the page on what to do. You may want to setup 2-step verification on your account for peace of mind - this effectively requires your actual mobile phone to log in on any new device.

Search your Spam and all emails for any emails from Microsoft/Skype and read them. Normally when you set up an account you have to confirm via email - so if they have used your email address you should have emails from all of these places requiring a confirmation.

Also, re the other accounts set up in your (gmail) name. If they are just using your email address and not your account you should be able to go onto eg the Skype website, login with your email, and request a password reset - which will come to your email. This will enable you to login into the account and make it yours/delete it.

I checked the link. No one, but me, has logged in for the last 28 days. I can see all the different devices I use but no one else's.

They might have set the accounts up longer than 28 days ago though.
Apart from the facebook notifications, I haven't seen any verification requests either, including in spam.

I am tying myself in knots with the microsoft thing though. I tried to log into skype this morning as I was sure I had an account with this email address (but I haven't used it for at least 3 years). It made me do a password reset, which was ok. Then it needed the username and I couldn't remember it, so I did another password reset. Then it wouldn't let me do anything more unless I used the phone verification for this other person's number. So, I decided to just remove the email address from the account.

Then I tried to set up a new skype account using my email address, but skype said I already have a microsoft account using that address, even though it had just accepted my deletion of the email address...

(Hope you follow this... I am confused too!)

Also, since my first post, I did a google search on my email address, suing just the first part. Its not like anyone's name... its just some random letters and 123. Someone from Japan has set up a google+ account with exactly this name, and someone else set up a deviant art account (whatever that is) with the same username last month.

Basically i have had this account forever and no one has ever shown any interest and suddenly, since the start of the summer, I'd got a singaporean woman using it on facebook, a Japanese man using it for google+, someone who speaks arabic using it on skype/ microsoft and a cartoonist putting it on deviantart!

Oh and I think I had a virus on my pc for a while as someone was sending people in my contacts books emails (but that was my yahoo account). i changed all passwords and did a thorough can using two different anti-virus software systems to make sure it was clean.

That sounds very odd. Have you contacted Google and asked them if they can see what is happening?

One more thing - I have an account at Deviantart, as far as a I can remember, when you set up an account you are sent an email with a confirmation link you have to click before the account is activated. Whoever set that account up must have access to your email account to do that.

Can you force a password reset on the Microsoft account that's been set up? Skype has been having some problems of its own in the last few days, so I wonder if the initial problems of logging in were related to that (although I managed to get in fine this morning).

It sounds like the virus may have allowed your email address to be harvested (your address wasn't exposed during Jeffreygate last month on MN?). Your Yahoo account may have had your Gmail account as a backup?

It is relatively common for people to accidentally start using other people's gmail accounts - I quite often get emails for someone with my name in the States, all completely banal stuff about arranging to go and play golf, occasionally work info like 'I've logged such-and-such in the timesheet system'. A friend of mine has a doppelganger who typed her email address in to all sorts of things, like when she was ordering a new phone and when she set up as an Avon rep. Thus all sorts of documents were sent to my friend and not the doppelganger. Eventually, fortunately, someone from the doppelganger's work emailed the account so my friend was able to reply and ask that the woman cease and desist - why she hadn't noticed the fact none of these emails were turning up in her own email account was unclear.

Seems weird someone was able to set up a Google+ account with your username, didn't you already have one?

I don't know whether the other accounts that have been set up used my email address or not. They used the first part e.g. htkm123 but not necessarily htkm123@gmail (its not htkm123 btw!)

Facebook and skype definitely used the whole email address. Facebookl kept sending verification requests, which is how I found out about it, but not microsoft/ skype.

Now, i've told microsoft/ skype that my gmail address was not sued to set up their account and so they've changed it to keep the name but only be accessed by a phone number - that I don't have, obviously!

Google+ has my real name, not the htkm123 that someone has used.

I know I don't own htkm123, but its such a random collection of letters and numbers that somehow I've been the sole user for years and years but now 4 separate people have started to use it, and at least 2 of them are also trying to use my email address. Is it malicious or sheer coincidence?

Tribpot, I tried the password reset. It seemed to work but I couldn't log in afterwards. So I tried to reset again, then I got locked out.
So i told microsoft my email shouldn't be used for that account and I thought that was it.

Except I want a skype account with that email address and so i then tried to set one up and I got a message saying the email address is in use with another account. So microsoft have kept the full name including the gmail address for the fraudulent account, even though it belongs to someone else.

I don't think tis got anything to do with jeffreygate - my gmail address isn't used on mn at all (its only used for work related stuff).

It might take a while for the email address thing to filter through Skype's system - if its still not working tomorrow contact their Support.