Maybe identify theft?

jclast

Weird stuff is happening to my email account. I've gotten emails from Target, Sears, Western Union, and now some resort in Mexico about accounts, purchases, or after-stay surveys. Every time it happens I call the business (never from the email, I look them up from the company website) and let them know that I never opened an account (or whatever) and they've been helpful is closing stuff down. The weird thing, though, is that the emails are never internally addressed to me. Like, they're coming into my email address, but the messages always start "Dear <not my name>".

This isn't how identity theft works, right? Like if somebody was trying to do this they'd be using my name but not my email so I didn't know about it. Has anybody else ever had something like this happen? If so, what was it and what did you do?

DevoutlyApathetic

No, this sounds like somebody thinks your email address is their email address. It happens especially with firstname.lastname@whatever.com type of addresses.

jclast

It's always different names though. It's happened four times and each time it's a different name that isn't my name is very different from my name (though my email address is first.last@domain). First and last names are different, once it was addressed to a woman, and this recent time it was a very Hispanic name while my name is about as "white guy in the US" as they come.

I'm super confused. At this point I'm requesting my free credit report to look at the account and make sure nothing is fishy. I'm glad to hear you don't think it's identity theft though.

Nocren

Might be general phishing scams?

Throw together a legit looking html email full of harmful links, address internally to a random recipient, spoof the "from" section and BCC the world and hope someone bites.

Veevee

I've gotten contract and earnings information from billion dollar businesses in Myanmar, somebodies realtor appointments and their kids soccer league info in South Africa, dental appointment receipts from someone in New Zealand, hundreds of random website sign ups, and many many other examples I don't feel like remembering from all over the world. I usually send replies saying they have the wrong email, especially with emails that could be important or reoccurring, but it doesn't stop it.

It's just a symptom of having a very old, and very simple gmail account (my PA username before the at). Mark the email as spam and/or create a rule or 2 to auto-trash it as soon as it arrives, because there isn't anything you can do to stop other people from telling businesses and other people that your email address is theirs.

Infidel

I have first-initial last-name at gmail, and I get a shitload of legit email that is for other people. Many of them with the same last name, most with the same initial but often not.

A lot of it is receipts or related to services (sometimes some stranger telling me to pick up the kids...) and I bet it is just someone verbally telling them "gee lastname at gmail" and the clerk typing in "dee lastname" etc.

If you have a pretty friendly address on a major host then I think this is par for the course. Delete delete delete.

Foomy

I'll just chime in to say I also get emails for all sorts of junk for names that aren't me and make no sense how anyone could of thought it was the right email address.

But that's just the way email goes, no one is trying to steal your identity from an email address, it's just about the least useless piece of information about you that exists.

Trash em and move on.

Samurai_Kitty

I get someone's square receipts, work schedule, and emails about other work-related stuff like benefits. I also just delete. Their loss if they really needed it.

fightinfilipino

to be safe, you should check your Credit Report. assuming you're in the U.S., the Federal government actually mandated free access to Credit Reports. the official site to do this is https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action. the check is free (actually mandated by Fed law). this should turn up any credit card accounts or other similar accounts that have been opened in your name, or under your social security number.

jclast

Yep, I mentioned above that I'm doing that already.

melissa1981

Sounds like a phishing scam and you were cc'd or bcc'd. If you're using gmail and this happened and you still have one of the emails or get another one, check and see if there are people being cc'd on it. Also, check and see if the reply to and from are similar. Somewhere along the lines you probably signed up for something or used an app (such as fb) to sign up for a website. Basically Chrome, gmail, and facebook stalk you. They like to tell you that your email isn't given to 3rd parties, but they're full of it.