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Someone keeps trying to sign my email up for stuff
SniperGuy
SniperGuyGamingRegistered User regular
SniperGuyGamingRegistered User regular
So I've had this problem for a while but it hadn't really bothered me until just now. I have a Gmail address that should be easy to figure out. Someone keeps signing up for stuff and using my email to do it. It isn't mailing lists or anything, it's actual accounts. I first discovered this when I tried to log into mine craft and had trouble. I did a password reset and logged into an account that wasn't mine! They hadn't purchased the game and the name was definitely not me.
Today, I got an email from Starbucks saying my card automatic refills had been turned on. I don't go to Starbucks unless someone gives me a gift card and haven't been in quite a while, but I do remember losing a card with a small balance on it. I did a password reset and logged into Starbucks to see an unfamiliar name and a card loaded with 25! I checked, my credit cards weren't used or anything but my info like a previous address and birthday are also in this account! So someone got access to my online account, either found my old one or connected a new gift card to it, and started using it.
I've even once gotten some family pictures with an attached "also come down and do your chores" note. I responded to that one explaining I'm not who they think. But this is getting ridiculous! I can see the name and address of the person on the Starbucks thing and hell I can even spend the card from my phone if I wanted to. (seems like a bad idea)
Any way to stop this sort of thing? Am in more trouble than I realize? Show write this guy a letter? What is going on?
edit: the card is registered to my name at an older address, but the last time it was reloaded was by this dude in New York. It shows the last 4 of the credit card and billing address. So it seems unlikely my lost card would have made it that far. I cancelled the auto billing, haven't done anything else yet.
Today, I got an email from Starbucks saying my card automatic refills had been turned on. I don't go to Starbucks unless someone gives me a gift card and haven't been in quite a while, but I do remember losing a card with a small balance on it. I did a password reset and logged into Starbucks to see an unfamiliar name and a card loaded with 25! I checked, my credit cards weren't used or anything but my info like a previous address and birthday are also in this account! So someone got access to my online account, either found my old one or connected a new gift card to it, and started using it.
I've even once gotten some family pictures with an attached "also come down and do your chores" note. I responded to that one explaining I'm not who they think. But this is getting ridiculous! I can see the name and address of the person on the Starbucks thing and hell I can even spend the card from my phone if I wanted to. (seems like a bad idea)
Any way to stop this sort of thing? Am in more trouble than I realize? Show write this guy a letter? What is going on?
edit: the card is registered to my name at an older address, but the last time it was reloaded was by this dude in New York. It shows the last 4 of the credit card and billing address. So it seems unlikely my lost card would have made it that far. I cancelled the auto billing, haven't done anything else yet.
SniperGuy on
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my guy has signed up for online banking, loads of game accounts, stores you name it. all i do is when the account verificatyion email comes threw i click the "no i didnt sign up to this" "its fraudulant" button to stop the accound being opened.
hes lucky i have some scruples
So maybe it is not a user mistake. Regardless, when this happened I checked anything that could be asociated to that mail, and reinforced passwords and/or dis-asociate things that are not esential, that could be a problem. (for example, image hosts, forum accounts except this one, subscription to games etc. and moved those subscriptions to a diferent adress that is 100% separate from stuff like home banking, paypal, etc.)
Write him a letter? If you have the address you can get it to them. I think pointing out that he keeps giving you access to things that cost them money would be a pretty good incentive for them to change the passwords pretty quick.
I suppose if you wanted to be a giant dick about it you could use the Starbucks credit to buy a gift card from Starbucks and just include it in the letter to make the point. Though the legality of that is super questionable so probably don't do that.
As for the starbucks card odds are someone reloaded it at a store not online. I doubt it's related.
I had a similar issue a while ago, because Google treats a.b.c@gmail.com, a.bc@gmail.com, and ab.c@gmail.com all as abc@gmail.com. So if my address was a.b.c@gmail.com and someone signs up for something with ab.c@gmail.com, I end up getting the emails.
Even if I have an account with that site (like UPlay), they don't know that Gmail ignores the dots, so they treat each of the above email addresses as separate accounts. It's extremely annoying and one of the few things that I believe Google has messed up big time on.
PSN: PLD_Xavier | NNID: Xavier1216
Also, this is very weird. The card shows as being purchased 5/19, then automatic reload for 25 on 6/17 and 6/18, then an in store purchase of 50 on 6/18. 6/28 and 6/30 both added 25 dollars under "automatic reload" and then 7/1 it was redeemed for 45.90. Who spends 45.90 or 50 dollars exactly at Starbucks?
According to my girlfriend that used to work there, you have to setup auto reload online. So did he convince support to reset the password or something without email access? I am so confused.
I posted this exact same thing about a year ago. This is my problem. I have first.lastname@gmail.com I have other 3 people signing stuff up for my account. All of them use it without the period. One from NY and one from Texas and a guys Virgin bill from the uk.
If it's automated stuff, you can usually opt out of stuff "unsubscribing". But not everything. The Virgin bill doesn't have that option, tried to go through their support and since I don't know this guys address, I'm not authorized to change his account, which makes sense. But that means monthly, I know how much his cell phone bill is.
In the couple of cases where this has happened to me, I've added a filter to auto-trash any email sent to the duplicate email address. I leave the From field blank, too, so it doesn't matter from where the email came. I kind of feel bad for the person that isn't getting their emails, but I don't really have any way of contacting them about it.
(Sorry to side-jack your thread, SniperGuy. Let us know how everything goes!)
PSN: PLD_Xavier | NNID: Xavier1216
Now, the question still remains, how did they add that in the first place? No one has attempted to login to my email, at least not as far as I can tell. Google shows recent device logins and nothing is out of the ordinary. I did go ahead and setup 2 step authentication just in case. I thought maybe Starbucks had been compromised or something, but according to phone guy that was a rumor, but nothing was actually leaked. Phone guy said in order for someone to add a card to an account, they would have had to verify the account information. You can do it online, but you'd have needed the password. I never got anything to reset a password.
So someone just guessed/knew my password, and used a stolen card to create gift cards on my starbucks account, but never bothered to try and login to email or anything else with that information. I am still so confused.
May want to review all your other passwords and be sure none are same or similar to email or Starbucks accounts.
Also good turning on 2 factor. Do that for all your other accounts as well when you change your passwords from a trusted machine.
I've gotten everything from airplane tickets to car maintenance notices... even had a spot of trouble with a freelance job that thought I had an account on their site, but it was held by an e-mail imposter. Unfortunately, there's just no blanket way to stop this stuff save beating companies over the head until they implement e-mail verification, and I have found customer service people universally unhelpful. "Hey, you need to tell customer x that they need to change their e-mail on file because I'm not paying their cell phone bill." "I can't do that." "Can you at least take my mail off the file? I can prove it's mine." "Only the customer can do that." Argh.
I've just started changing e-mails on people's accounts whenever possible. After 3-4 attempts to get the account back, they usually seem to get the idea.
If happens just once with the same name/user name I usually just ignore it and send to spam.
if the same person does it on multiple sites then sometimes I'll request password resets and then login and change the email to some gargbage or close the account. just so they get the clue.