Have you tried sending them emails asking/telling them to stop?

kstrauser 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	josephg an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		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.
	▲	Izkata 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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...

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lawrencejgd 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>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.

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Mordisquitos 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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tracker1 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

	▲	rationalist 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Contact the Bar Association for that lawyer's state. He will definitely stop making that mistake then.