Comment by Romario77
21 hours ago
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.
21 hours ago
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.
I have a catch-all on a .com.au domain where there exists a later 1000+ people organisation with the equivalent .gov.au. I get what you described but from many, many people - divorce proceedings, legal discussions, financial documents, health things, etc.
Yeah I have josephg@gmail. The amount of spam that account gets is wild - about 50-100 emails hit the inbox per day. I got soft-locked out of google docs a few months ago because my google account's 25gb quota was exhausted.
Some of the emails are really unfortunate stuff. "Your account was added as a backup address." - Then inevitably, a few weeks later, dozens of password reset emails. Sorry bud. I've received pay stubs. Orders and invoices. I get phone bills every month for someone in India. Its chaos.
Early on I'd sometimes reply to these random emails telling people they've got the wrong address. The most astonishing reply I ever got was from HSBC bank telling me I needed to come into the branch to change my email address. Over the course of a week, I explained about 3 times that that was impossible. That I live in Australia. That I'm not their customer, and its not my account. Eventually they told me they were disabling online banking on my account. Now I've given up replying at all.
Send emails into that pit of PII misery if you want. I don't read them.
I had one that person seemed to think their @twitter name was the same thing as my gmail address. Haven't seen it in a while, maybe they figured it out after I told their kid's teacher they had the wrong person...
I have very weird and rare @gmail.com and I Still get other peoples mail sometimes.
>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.
I have a story here: I deleted my Reddit account.
A few months later, the owner of the u/batman account added my mail as password reset mail.
I looked up the account. It was hardly ever used in 15 years, mostly for once in a blue moon dropping in a random comment role-playing as Batman. It was not obviously anyone I knew. It looked like they were basically inviting me to take over the account.
That was actually a bit tempting, but then the owner, whoever they were, would know who I was, and I still didn't know who they were.
(For that reason I've changed the name, it wasn't Batman, but it was equally "I can't believe you got THAT as your Reddit username" rare.)
So I clicked "this wasn't me" instead. After a few weeks the account was deleted by the owner. It seems they were willing to burn a 15+ year old account with a super-desirable (to many) name in order to get me back to Reddit, and then when I refused they just deleted it. That was VERY weird, and I wish I knew what was going on.
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.
Contact the Bar Association for that lawyer's state. He will definitely stop making that mistake then.
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.”
You forgot the part where he reset their email he didn't own and change their passwords so they couldn't get back into it
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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...
It's like leaving your bike in the street, with no lock. Still theft, but you'd be up for a part of the responsibility.
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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.
It would be in Canada, but our "misuse of computer" charge is overly broad and never been well tested.
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No harm done no one is gonna prosecute this
In what jurisdiction? He's in Russia