Stupid Patterns
darshit.dev
Stupid Patterns
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Re: Stupid Patterns
#2This is nothing.
I have a very common name and a very common surname and people have used my email (name.surname at gmail.com plus the infamous GMail variants such as namesurname or NameSurname) for purposes like accounts on dating sites, Spotify, Instagram etc.; invoices; banks and insurances; resumes and job applications; medical test results; newsletters and all kinds of personal communications.
"I" am a local politician, a Swiss or Italian banker, a boyfriend deserting some girl in Argentina, a rugby player, a professor or two; "I" buy screws, magic tricks, diving suits; I know several of "my" birth dates and addresses and I have easily identified a couple of correspondents.
In most cases there is no practical way to verify email addresses, particularly if the person is really convinced that their email is the wrong one or that some approximation is allowed, and without actual payment collections coming your way little harm is done.
I sometimes complain to web sites with inexcusable confirmation-less registrations or reclaim accounts on services I might want to use, but for the most part I just let incorrect emails accumulate to play the passive game of collating them and consolidating identities (e.g. is the person who follows cooking courses in a certain big city the same who received from a friend bus timetables for that city?).
Re: Stupid Patterns
#3This is nothing. I have a very common name and a very common surname and people have used my email (name.surname at gmail.com plus the infamous GMail variants such as namesurname or NameSurname) for purposes like accounts on dating sites, Spotify, Instagram etc.; invoices; banks and insurances; resumes and job applications; medical test results; newsletters and all kinds of personal communications. "I" am a local pol…
We are on the educated side of the internet populace. I can only imagine worse things when this happens to the non-educated, especially in developing countries like India, where almost everyone has an (mobile) internet connection these days.
It's interesting to think about how the very basis of our internet identities, that is the email, can be so easily abused by someone who has bad intent.
Re: Stupid Patterns
#4This is nothing. I have a very common name and a very common surname and people have used my email (name.surname at gmail.com plus the infamous GMail variants such as namesurname or NameSurname) for purposes like accounts on dating sites, Spotify, Instagram etc.; invoices; banks and insurances; resumes and job applications; medical test results; newsletters and all kinds of personal communications. "I" am a local pol…
> In most cases there is no practical way to verify email addresses
What's wrong with "Click the link in the email we just sent to x@x.com to verify your email"?
Re: Stupid Patterns
#5Not sure GDPR is related to typos or deliberate misdirection by users - though I feel your frustration.
By any chance does the numeric component of your e-mail alias form a shape on the 10-key pad?
Re: Stupid Patterns
#6Not sure GDPR is related to typos or deliberate misdirection by users - though I feel your frustration. By any chance does the numeric component of your e-mail alias form a shape on the 10-key pad?
Under GDPR, people have the right to have their PII stored accurately and can demand corrections from companies. There was a case where a bank couldn't store someone's name properly, because its legacy systems couldn't handle characters with diacritics. The customer sued, and won.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/10/ebcdic-is-incompatible-with...
Not a lawyer but I imagine this is a similar sort of situation and the same reasoning would apply.
Re: Stupid Patterns
#7This is nothing. I have a very common name and a very common surname and people have used my email (name.surname at gmail.com plus the infamous GMail variants such as namesurname or NameSurname) for purposes like accounts on dating sites, Spotify, Instagram etc.; invoices; banks and insurances; resumes and job applications; medical test results; newsletters and all kinds of personal communications. "I" am a local pol…
> In most cases there is no practical way to verify email addresses What's wrong with "Click the link in the email we just sent to x@x.com to verify your email"?
A malicious recipient can click the link and exploit that their email is now associated to the account of some other person.
Re: Stupid Patterns
#8Just a random thought: can it be that a part of 'darshit' (the poo part, I mean) triggers some code to remove bad language, does something unknown, and then your real e-mail address gets linked to the first known account the respective system can find? Maybe all the different websites use the same authentication method from another third party, so it can happen on seemingly unrelated sites.
Re: Stupid Patterns
#9This is nothing. I have a very common name and a very common surname and people have used my email (name.surname at gmail.com plus the infamous GMail variants such as namesurname or NameSurname) for purposes like accounts on dating sites, Spotify, Instagram etc.; invoices; banks and insurances; resumes and job applications; medical test results; newsletters and all kinds of personal communications. "I" am a local pol…
I have a similar situation.
My most recent one was Apple telling me my id was reset by my request. This definitely came from Apple, was verifiable... But it turned out some person entered my email on their support case and it almost gave me access to their entire Apple account, the support people were willing to go through everything with me as I had the email.
It was only when I asked for the transcript of what I'd apparently said to them that alarm bells rang on their end and they finally investigated enough and escalated enough and determined my email was not the one that had anything to do with the account in question.
Mostly I ignore the email I receive, but once in a while it has enough details that I can find the person involved and give them their train tickets, or car insurance docs, etc.
Re: Stupid Patterns
#10Just a random thought: can it be that a part of 'darshit' (the poo part, I mean) triggers some code to remove bad language, does something unknown, and then your real e-mail address gets linked to the first known account the respective system can find? Maybe all the different websites use the same authentication method from another third party, so it can happen on seemingly unrelated sites.
I've never had such a problem before. My email is just not simply "darshit", but also has a couple of digits. Among the people whose mail I received, one of the guy's email had 6 characters more than mine, and totally unrelated.