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The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account

#141

Post by kelnage »

I believe this is in part a failure of Google and other large email providers to provide clarity in the UI when registering a recovery email address. At least when this feature was first introduced, as I remember it, it was relatively easy to misinterpret the feature as signing you up for additional/alternative email addresses, rather than specifying an email address you already had access to that would be used for recovery if access to the main account was lost.

This may have been rectified since, and I'm still not sure how so many of these people haven't noticed that their "new" email address is not working - but I guess they put it down to spam filtering or similar.

Re: The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account

#142

Post by taejo »

shocks wrote: post #129
OkGoDoIt wrote: post #114

I own the domain name for my last name, so that I have the email address [firstname]@[lastname].com. But when signing up for services I like to use my domain as a catchall so I can have unique email addresses for each service. Of course that means I receive all emails sent to anything at [lastname].com. Even though my last name is not that common, there’s apparently a ton of people with my last name who sign up for s…

I’m the same except instead of [lastname] it’s ‘example’. The tld is a little rarer but plenty of people still use it as garbage input to web forms!

I'm not sure if you're using "example" as a metasyntactic variable, or you're actually the owner of example.com. If it's the latter, I do use your domain for forms that require an email but I don't actually want feedback from. In my defense, your web page says "You may use this domain in literature without prior coordination or asking for permission." This isn't literature, but I didn't think I needed permission or coordination for other users either.

Re: The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account

#143

Post by woko »

Baeocystin wrote: post #13

I was so happy when I was able to get my (exceedingly common) full name as my gmail address. 1.x decades later, I regret it. I get people's medical information, legal documentation, all of it. It is stunning to me the quantity of PII that flows into my inbox daily. Back when it was a trickle, I used to try and contact the people involved to let them know of the issue. It almost never worked out, and I got tired of ge…

I have the same issue. I never waste time trying to find a way to forwards these emails to the right people, because I am extremely suspicious, so I often assume there is a phishing attempt behind these emails. I mean, often, money is mentioned in the email (like booking a hotel, a bill, a car insurance, Internet subscription, etc.). It might be legit, but it is not worth the hassle for me, and it is none of my business anyway.

Re: The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account

#144

Post by ponker »

wyclif wrote: post #138
ponker wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that is how Gmail works if it finds a contact in your address book... type the name and it autocompletes. You could be on the receiving end of autocomplete failures that go unnoticed by the sender.

I considered that, but then I checked and saw that almost all of them are coming from other domains, and often non-webmail domains. Of course, whatever email management software or app they're using on their end could be doing that, too.

I use exclusively custom domain emails but use Gmail to manage all of them.

Re: The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account

#145

Post by kranner »

gwbas1c wrote: post #51

I have (my legal name)@gmail.com and I occasionally get mail for people with the same name. Usually I just send a polite response or flag it as spam; but the time I got a Covid-19 test order I called the doctor.

> I have (my legal name)@gmail.com and I occasionally get mail for people with the same name.

Same here. In the last few years, I've had a Toyota dealer send me quotes for new cars ("as per our meeting yesterday"), I've been looped into ongoing business conversations about negotiating bulk rates for importing doodads from China, and have even received a job offer as a junior dealer at a brokerage. This last one had a CV for the job applicant attached so I could see the applicant's actual address and forwarded the mail to them.

Re: The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account

#147

Post by robinduckett »

Barnes and Noble don't do email confirmation, I know this because of all the Bible receipts I have, bought with my email account on the sale by a geriatric in Utah with my name. I don't really mind, but Barnes and Noble wouldn't cancel the account. I had to put my foot down when I had an email from some other service that sent one of his passwords plaintext. I emailed the company in question and changed some setting in the account to "this person does not use this email address" but I still routinely get Barnes and Noble emails :/

Re: The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account

#148

Post by Fradow »

While my personal OG account has been very tame so far compared to other stories here (6 letters gmail account from beta period), I got a far more interesting one from my company domain.

Since people are routinely misspell my coworkers email, I decided early on I would be the catch-all of the company domain.

Excluding the droves of email from various services from former coworker, there has been a very interesting one: someone that never worked for the company decided to use [firstname].[lastname]@company. That guy was in my country military, serving on a military boat. For some time (before I found how to block any email addressed to that particular email at the domain level), I received what seemed to be very sensitive military information.

I can't be too sure, as I did exactly what was outlined at the end of the emails: destroy them as soon as I received them, since I was not the intended recipient. Luckily, nothing ever came out of it.

Re: The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account

#149

Post by ben_utzer »

There are so many big service providers that do not verify emails and start spamming anyway.

And there are also companies like Epic Games that got my email via a (failed) Playstation registration something. When I wanted to register to buy a game it did not allow me to create my account. I had to use another temporary email while I entered the account with my correct email and deleted it.

We should make a support group for the endless frustrations.

I should also point out that I connected with one of the similarly-named-email guy. When I recognize that it was directed to him, I'll just forward the email now.

Re: The joys of owning an ‘OG’ email account

#150

Post by brazzy »

Oh god yes. I have a 6 character pronouncable gmail address as my main email address. Some highlights:

* Several people from (I think) Mexico City have sent me requests in Spanish asking for medical prescriptions, including photos of their current medication.

* I started receiving receipts for an Italian parking fee app. After I contacted their support about the problem, I received an email addressed to their user asking them to confirm the email address.

* Someone signed up for Comcast DSL and there was no way to opt out of those emails, support didn't react and logging into the account would have required additional information not in the emails. I finally made a complaint to the FTC under the CAN SPAM act - that got their attention and they managed to fix the issue.

* Someone signed up for some rewards program and proceeded to collect points by signing up for about 10 different newsletters.

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