I think my personal email account might be being used by someone else.
About a month ago I received a email from Google asking me to confirm my account for recovery for another email address/account which was similar to mine. Basically someone was using my email address as a back up recovery for there's, which had nearly the same email address as mine(uses my full name in the address). I did not confirm the account was mine, as there was an option to do so, to dis-associate the account, which I did and had no further trouble till I checked my emails this morning.
Now I don't check my account often, but this morning I noticed I have messages sent and received for the email account that was trying to use my address as recovery. I have the persons full name and email address. And because it looks like this person is using adult site's(from emails received), I got ton's of spam emails about stuff you wouldn't believe. I have had this account for years and have never had anything like this as it's my main personal account.
I'm just gonna close down my account now as I worried someone is up to something with my address. Gonna be a long my morning changing my email address on other sites. Anybody seen this problem before?
Now I don't check my account often, but this morning I noticed I have messages sent and received for the email account that was trying to use my address as recovery. I have the persons full name and email address. And because it looks like this person is using adult site's(from emails received), I got ton's of spam emails about stuff you wouldn't believe. I have had this account for years and have never had anything like this as it's my main personal account.
I'm just gonna close down my account now as I worried someone is up to something with my address. Gonna be a long my morning changing my email address on other sites. Anybody seen this problem before?
Comments
All sounds a bit phishy.
Personally, I'd just delete any unwanted email and change my password to something obscure, making sure any entries for recovering your own account are for accounts of your own (maybe make a new one for that if you don't have another). Sounds suspiciously like they've gained access surreptitiously so this should thwart them.
I'm pretty sure I'd believe the contents of those emails btw. I once had an odd subscription charge on my credit card, it ran for 3 months before I noticed. Turned out to be an anonymous payment collection service, and someone had subscribed to farmgirls dot com (or something like that). I can only imagine that site content, I was too afraid to look as even I have my limits. Anyway... I cancelled the card transaction and my card issuer blocked any further payments and that was the end of it. No big drama.
About your account, you should change your password to something totally paranoid and enable some kind of two factor authentication for account changes (I don't remember if that's possible on gmail). Set up a recovery account so you can retrieve it in case of unwanted changes.
And take some screenshots and talk to google customer ser vice, maybe they can disassociate that rogué account.
An' you know what they said?
Well, some of it was true!
It was from a link but it just opened another tab showing my Google account settings, where I was able to dis-associate it. I'm 100% sure it was genuine Google. I also changed all my passwords after this.
That is it. The 2 address are different with having a dot and other hasn't. One is also gmail, the other is googlemail, don't know if that makes any difference.
How would someone still make an account though and claim it as their's if that address is taken? You would of thought they would use numbers etc to separate them for the same name.
Oh and the other email address similar to mine had been sending emails to me with videos attached of an adult nature lol.
That other person signs up for a newsletter, mistakenly types your e-mail address, and you get that newsletter with name of the other person in it.
20 people send e-mail to that other person. 3 people mistakenly type your e-mail address, and you get those mails addressed to the other person. Etc, etc.
If you're paranoid, you could check password recovery options for the account. For example if a 'back-up' e-mail address in there is also yours. Whether a "What's your mother's maiden name?" or similar question isn't too easy to guess. And maybe update that. And when done, change password to a nice & strong one.
People are stupid, and people are sloppy. And sometimes people pick user names or e-mail addresses that are almost the same as other users. That's all there is to it, I think.
I get this all the time. So far, I've been emailed by Hillary Clinton's campaign, bought several cars in texas... Confirmed gym memberships... that sort of thing.
I usually confirm stuff for people, as they're expecting it. What they don't expect is for me to opt them into really expensive stuff. The fallout that lands in my email box is hilarious.
Everyone should be doing that anyway for anything as crucial as their main email account as once you compromise someone's email you can reset all their other passwords for anything not using two factor auth.
If your email password is less that 8 characters long or has anything resembling words in it, go and change it to something random right now.
I'm going for somethingrandom123.