Comment by rationalist
15 hours ago
Someone constantly adds my Gmail address as their Gmail account's backup address.
I constantly remove it whenever Gmail sends me the notification.
I can't help but think there is some method for the other person to steal my Gmail account if I never remove my email as their backup.
I have an "OG" mac.com account (got it about five minutes after Steve announced it). My wife actually has her first name.
We both get hit with "OG Hell," where people are constantly entering our emails. I think most time, it is accidental (maybe they meant "XXX1234", and forgot the number).
What makes it worse, is that Apple aliases mac.com, icloud.com, and me.com together, and there's no way to turn off one of the aliases.
mac.com is really in retirement. No one sets up new ones, but the miscreants typo icloud.com, which gets routed to me.
I have a rule, where I shitcan every mail to icloud.com, but I wish I could simply turn off the forwarder.
I logged in several times to other people's accounts and reset their passwords. But it's too tiring, people keep adding my email.
I hope it's because I have small simple email and not because they want to steal it.
Have you tried sending them emails asking/telling them to stop?
I’m a different person, but this happens to me, too. I have the kstrauser@yahoo.com email address because I signed up for it like 25 years ago. I log in every 6 months to see what the few other kstrausers in the world have signed me up for.
Not jsmith, but kstrauser. Not Gmail, but Yahoo. And I still get banking docs, and HOA meeting minutes, and birthday party invitations, and Facebook logins, and other bizarre random stuff.
I have so many questions. I’ve typoed my address before and had to correct it. That’s understandable. But to wholly invent one and say, yep, that looks good even though I’ve never used it before, I’m sure it’ll be fine! I just don’t get it.
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>You write an email that says "Hey, can you please stop using my email address?"
>You send it to johnsmith@gmail.com
>You receive a new message, it says "Hey, can you please stop using my email address?"
>You're johnsmith@gmail.com, you only know that's the address that's being used
PD: I know that if he resets the password he can get the other address, but this scenario was funny in my head.
That may be what they're hoping for, using a similar modus operandi as those WhatsApp/IM messages from strangers who text you with things in the vein of ‘Hey, it was great meeting you at the conference’ or ‘Did Martha like your flowers?’ etc.
They may well be looking for targets.
There are times where you just can't... someone uses my email address in person at tractor supply co. and I'm getting a ton of marketing email I can't usnsub to.
I've had this happen several times... There's a lawyer I used for a dispute a few years ago, and they now have another "First Last" name that matches mine, and he keeps emailing me... my reply, "Wrong Michael, again..."
It's kind of annoying all around... I need to get off my butt and get a few things shifted, then just start relying on my own MTA again, instead of forwarding *@mydomain to my gmail to. I'll still wildcard the domain, but to a single mailbox on my own mta.
I'm not sure how bad the spam might get though... I've had a test account on my mta for a couple years and it hasn't really recived any... my wildcard accounts either... I use the wildcard so I can do things like walmart@mydomain, to see if/where an email address is sold/leaked from regarding spam.
1 reply →
You’re confessing to several actual felonies here, may want to change strategies.
“…and so I made him the owner of my account, and he used that to remove himself from it!”
“We’ll be right over.”
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Right. Techies are always quick to suggest I do something naughty or funny with this "great power" I've unwittingly gained, but in reality it's just a liability. If I ignore it and they do something nasty and implicate me, it's a pain. If I touch it with a 10 ft pole, now I'm even more actively involved.
Just include "not me!" In the verification email, dam it
You give someone ownership of something and they used that ownership...
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I'm curious if this would really be considered unlawful access, since only pure idiocy and no hacking/scamming/etc were involved.
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No harm done no one is gonna prosecute this
In what jurisdiction? He's in Russia
My Gmail account is a funny word in Spanish that I got when there was still plenty of names available.
I get TONS of emails of people trying to join services that use my address as a "fake email".
We call this the Scunthorpe problem. Stupid "rude word" detectors use simple rules that fail on actual words.
Way back I was working on a loyalty card system that had the entire UK electoral roll and Post Office data and we had to validate people; names and addresses. A "comedian" decided to sign themselves up for the system using a stupid name, and when the loyalty card duly arrived at their (correct) address with their (incorrect) name, they went to the papers and it became a slow news day human interest story.
We had to implement a Scunthorpe filter, and that was really difficult. We ended up with a human looking at the data and hitting a button if they thought this was a made-up "funny" name or address.
You would be amazed at English place names and surnames. Velvet Bottom is a real place in the UK. There are many people wandering around with names that you can't say in polite company.
This happens to me several times a month. I'm more concerned about account termination, in that if their Gmail account is terminated for some reason, mine would be as well due to it being the backup email address.
You could try stealing theirs. Surely, one of the forgot-password flows must use the recovery email.
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