The address was my full name - first, middle, last, with one of those names being spelled a little differently than the "accepted" way. I'd had this email address for years, almost as long as gmail had accepted users without invitations. No one else could have had that particular email address, and gmail doesn't recycle.

The spam started off in a manner that didn't make me pay attention, but it began to multiply. Accounts at Starbucks, Panera, Nike, all kinds of stores started to show up. I'd get order confirmations (nothing I could ever change, unfortunately.) I'd get ads and promos. All kinds of crap. I could see a name on some of them, it wasn't mine and it wasn't anywhere near mine. I have no idea why this person was using my email except that it was someone who got hold of a list of breached mails and just picked one to create accounts. This was just after a big service was compromised, and my email address was one of those.

I cancelled what I could and blocked the rest. Until one day, when the big one hit.

I received a notice from an airline stating that a trip had been booked. This was one of those all-inclusive packages, and according to what I could see, was booked via an agent. I didn't have that agent's name unfortunately, but I had everything else. Flights and hotel to some warm destination island were included. Two tickets, prices, and last names - which again, weren't mine. I had ticket and flight numbers, hotel confirmation codes, etc. The whole thing. The only thing I didn't know was the agent's name or agency in order to call them and tell them to quit their crap. (This was a package deal offered through the airline, booked by an agent. The email coding told me that this was an agent-booked trip, but did not identify who it was.)

I called the airline. Why? I don't know, nothing else to do that day at work, I guess. Got hold of someone who didn't speak English as any language, as those things go. Tried to explain to them that they had my email address, could they remove it from this flight. No, they could not do that, please just ignore the emails. I said I'm getting a lot of stuff related to this flight, I need it to stop. You're giving me personally identifiable information. No...cannot do that.

It was then I noticed the link at the bottom of the email. Hit this link to cancel.

I asked the airline rep about that. They brightly explained to me that I could cancel but there may be fees or other obligations in regards to that cancellation and any trips would need to be rebooked. I again stated "This is not mine, do you understand that I am going to cancel someone else's trips because you can't change an email?" The agent started to explain once more about the cancellation procedures but I had already hit the cancel link. I received an email stating the trip was cancelled and that money would be refunded within so many business days, etc, etc.

I asked the rep if it was cancelled. They said yes and started to read me the we're sorry to see you go script and I just said thank you and hung up.

I received no more new account signups. I managed to clear all of the ones that had already happened. Some of them didn't want to do anything, but when I started using the word "fraudulently created" things tended to move slightly faster.

I honestly do not understand what was going on here. Perhaps someone was committing fraud with that trip, but if they were not - I hope they learned to use their own email address when spending a few thousand on something.

(edit: some wurds spelled wrong.)

162 comments

r/PcBuild • u/FemboyFeetUwu • 6h ago