Woman Gets Petty Revenge On Stranger Who’s Been Using Her Email Address For Years
Interview With Author
Email is one of our key digital tools. Not only does it help us keep in touch with our loved ones and receive important updates from the bank, but it also serves as a primary identifier for accessing various online platforms and services.
Redditor -Blundertaker- has had hers since forever, but at some point, she noticed that someone was trying to use it. Luckily, the security of her inbox wasn’t breached, but as the woman explained on the subreddit ‘Petty Revenge,’ the whole ordeal did lead to a few funny stories.
Image credits: Stephen Phillips – Hostreviews.co.uk / unsplash (not the actual photo)
Image credits: ajtp92 / reddit (not the actual photo)
Image credits: -blundertaker-
Luckily, the unwanted emails haven’t really disrupted the woman’s (digital) everyday life
We got in touch with the author of the post and she said there wasn’t much reason to think that things might get crazy.
“When it started happening, I didn’t have any concerns about the security of my email because the person who was using it had no chance of actually accessing my account,” -Blundertaker- told Bored Panda.
Estimates of the prevalence of spam vary largely due to its slippery definition. Some surveys place the figure at round 45% to 50%, while others say as much as 85% of all email traffic today is spam. But I don’t know anyone who would like to receive more junk.
Random additional correspondence that you shouldn’t even be part of certainly doesn’t help either. Many of us receive bills, insurance renewals, and other household documents by email — it saves time and money, and reduces unnecessary paper use.
However, there are risks involved if you get buried under a pile of nonsense and don’t stay on top of your electronic records. Adjunct lecturer at the University of New England Matt Balogh and his team have found that people suffer issues such as lapsed vehicle registrations, failing to cancel unwanted subscriptions, and overlooking tax deductions because it was too much trouble finding the receipts.
This suggests late fines and other email oversights could be costing them hundreds of dollars each year.
In addition to the financial burden, research suggests that not sorting and managing electronic records makes it more difficult to assemble the information needed at tax time, or for other high-stakes situations, such as loan applications.
Luckily, -Blundertaker- has been staying on top of things and the unwanted emails haven’t really disrupted her (digital) everyday life.
“I haven’t considered changing my email address because it’s my original one,” she added. “And, again, no one else can get to it. It’s been secure from day one.”
Image credits: Solen Feyissa (not the actual photo)
As her story went viral, the woman joined the discussion in the comments
One of the ways this can happen is through address books and auto-complete. The person gets their email address wrong once and the browser remembers it. They then use the auto-complete the next time thinking it is the correct email address. They can be reasonably intelligent people too - I have one in mind that keeps getting her husband's email address wrong, because it contains a middle initial. I get to see this, as I am the admin for the mailserver and see the bounces in the logs.
People constantly say they've emailed me from jobs etc and then I go - there's no email, did you send it to the right address and then they check and they've missed a letter out and this same person once again has gotten emails for my stuff. It melts me, she must have hundreds of emails meant for me
For about eight years, I had someone using my email address for all sorts of things. I did everything I could to get the senders to contact the person and fix it, or to just stop sending things, to no avail. I was finally able to contact the person because of a recovery phone number on one of the many many accounts she signed up for using my address. When we spoke, she accused me of hacking her account, and said, "It's MY email address because that's MY name!" She apparently thought everyone had an email address that was theirname@gmail.com. When I asked her how she thought that would work when other people could have the same name, her reply was, "But I'm 80-something! I had the name first! Your address should be oursamename15@gmail.com or something! Stop using my address!" Nothing could convince this old lady that email didn't work like that, that it wasn't just "assigned" to everyone, and didn't go by "seniority". The emails eventually stopped only because she passed away.
One of the ways this can happen is through address books and auto-complete. The person gets their email address wrong once and the browser remembers it. They then use the auto-complete the next time thinking it is the correct email address. They can be reasonably intelligent people too - I have one in mind that keeps getting her husband's email address wrong, because it contains a middle initial. I get to see this, as I am the admin for the mailserver and see the bounces in the logs.
People constantly say they've emailed me from jobs etc and then I go - there's no email, did you send it to the right address and then they check and they've missed a letter out and this same person once again has gotten emails for my stuff. It melts me, she must have hundreds of emails meant for me
For about eight years, I had someone using my email address for all sorts of things. I did everything I could to get the senders to contact the person and fix it, or to just stop sending things, to no avail. I was finally able to contact the person because of a recovery phone number on one of the many many accounts she signed up for using my address. When we spoke, she accused me of hacking her account, and said, "It's MY email address because that's MY name!" She apparently thought everyone had an email address that was theirname@gmail.com. When I asked her how she thought that would work when other people could have the same name, her reply was, "But I'm 80-something! I had the name first! Your address should be oursamename15@gmail.com or something! Stop using my address!" Nothing could convince this old lady that email didn't work like that, that it wasn't just "assigned" to everyone, and didn't go by "seniority". The emails eventually stopped only because she passed away.
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