Hacker News Reader

Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of a kafkaesque situation I had a few years back. I was getting text messages from Barclays about my account (I don’t have an account). I contacted them telling them to desist but because I’m not a customer I can’t actually tell them to change details on an account that isn’t mine.

View on HN

I keep getting email from PayPal about their terms and conditions changing. I have a PayPal account, which I can't delete, because to delete it, I'd have to log in, but when I enter my details (which I know are correct; I use a password manager), I get a generic error message. Trying the password recovery procedure with my username gives me the same generic error message. I've emailed customer support twice, but they don't seem to be staffed by humans, because both times I got the same "you should use the password recovery procedure" template response, even though I explained it doesn't work.

I've created a filter to send them to trash, but it just feels so very sad.

Years ago (2008?) I was able to get PayPal's customer support to tell me my password over the phone. Try that ;)

No you didn't. PayPal has never stored passwords in plaintext. I know because I worked anti-fraud for PayPal, and even I couldn't get access to that database, much less see passwords, even though I had a list of passwords I was trying to verify that I had gotten from people who steal accounts.

wait. so you think a plain text db of customer passwords does exist?

Or are you saying you couldn't access it because it doesn't exist

If he has the passwords, he could hash them and compare that against the entries in the DB.

I think he's saying he didn't even have access to the DB of non-plaintext passwords.

It doesn't exist. They were so secure about their passwords they wouldn't even let me check my password list against the database as an insider checking for fraud.

Crap, you're right. Thanks for calling me out on that.

It was ebay, not paypal. Think I was paying ebay through paypal at the time.

I have this situation right now with the bank in Singapore. The only way I can stop the email is to visit one of their branches. On the other side of the world.

I've had this problem with a few companies over the years. In gmail it was possible to add a rule to auto-trash all email from that company. I'm guessing other email software has a similar feature. Frustrating I couldn't get them to stop sending them but at least I no longer see the emails.

I have the same issue with Microsoft Teams. Someone once invited me to join a group on Teams, and now (years later) I get occasional but persistent emails from Teams. I can't stop them, because the setting apparently needs me to be signed in, but I don't have an account. I mark them as spam, because it's all I can do.

I think I experienced the same quirk - basically, you need a Teams license to sign in to teams (in order to access an outside organization as a guest), so if you don’t pay for it via your AAD org (or via a free live.com account) you’ll get emails while not being able to accept the invite or access the channels.

I had a fun time this past year with someone using my email on Amazon. It took many calls and escalations over a few weeks before getting the problem fixed, largely because I wasn't the account owner. I have no idea why my email is allowed to be permanently attached to any account without verification.

Can't you do a password reset and take over the account if you control the email? That might be illegal, but you'd probably be OK as long as you don't charge their credit card. Or, you know, it's been awhile since you used Amazon and you actually did forget the password, right? wink wink

Thankfully no, I tried it and it requires additional account information. But I was also very honest when I called Amazon about the issue. Since I had shipping addresses, order history, and names of the other person I wonder if social engineering would have worked. Without their phone or credit card I think probably not.

If the volume is bothersome, send it to their privacy contact.

> I don’t have an account

You do now :-)

Block them?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com