You can deactivate anyone's WhatsApp account by simply sending an email

This is just an atrocious flow. A better approach would be a "temporary emergency block", and then give the user a week to sort it out, otherwise the account is automatically reinstated.

Can't the legitimate owner recover the account once they get a replacement SIM?

If we're talking about deactivating someone's account via email, we are already talking about a targeted attack.

I think it depends on who you ask. IIRC there was a stat that showed a substantial % of people only use WhatsApp rarely and they might not notice the deactivation and/or miss the 30 days deadline, getting their accounts deleted.

I used to get email for a guy in California when he would buy something from Harbor Freight, rent a movie from Redbox, or order a pizza. Those started tapering off about a year ago, so he must have figured it out.

The strangest one was I was receiving email for a colonel in the US Army! For a few years I kept getting these group emails to all these army officers about upcoming training exercises. I thought about replying to let them know they shouldn’t be sending them to me, but was worried about getting in trouble, so never did. They continued for years, but finally stopped. I always wondered if the guy had a .mil address and accidentally used gmail.com.

In retrospect I should have chosen g6adfs789zg2@gmail.com or something.

I also started getting a ton of spam from some cell phone retailer in Jakarta - someone used an email address of mine to sign up for a SIM, it seems, and unsubscribing from their crapflood is behind a password, assuming they'd even honor it. I blackholed their mail server at mine, but that doesn't scale.

And I get an endless stream of "a lot has happened since you last logged in" any time I un-blackhole Zuckerbook, and I've never used them.

At this point, every commercial entity I do business with gets a unique email address so I can turn them off. But that doesn't stop the confused/stupid/malicious from using them.

If I can find the time, I've been wanting to write a new milter-type tool to make it much easier to control which mail servers I'll talk. Yes, this is how SMTP dies. But at least it will be usable for me in the mean time.

I'm the recipient of bank statements, cell phone statements, medical information, invitations to parties, and answers to HOA complaints. But more than anything, I'm the world's most prolific subscriber to dating websites, and my taste covers the whole spectrum and back.

I keep using the email address to use for low importance stuff. It's also a good way to see that clicking "Unsubscribe" actually works. Or better, the Spanish equivalent: "Darse de baja". I know the words very well.

After years of trying to make them stop, he just started replying. “I’m not coming in tomorrow”, that sort of thing.

He never lied. He was not going to be at work at Heathrow tomorrow.

I think that finally made it stop.

He argued that I was lying about getting his phone number from his phone bills because he doesn't get his phone bill emailed out to him. I said yes, that is correct. Your phone bill is emailed to me. Eventually I got frustrated with him and told him I was trying do him a favour and he accused me of hacking his email account.

Then over the next few hours he called me back multiple times to tell me he had called the police, how much trouble I was in, and to tell me to stop calling him and harassing him or he would press charges. I pointed out he was the one that kept calling me, and somehow that registered and he never called back.

He did fix his phone account so I don't get those, but I get plenty of other email for him.

I got service emails for the same year, model, and color Honda Civic that I own from a dealer in the UK. I am in the US. That alone was spooky.

The car was owned by somebody who matched my first initial, last name email address. (Edwin, I believe…)

I tried to unsubscribe. I tried to contact customer service. Nothing worked.

Each email would come with a little video walk around of the car. Eventually I started responding saying that their paint looked better than my car, etc.

I don’t get them anymore. I presume the owner sold the car.

I've received Amazon gift cards, customs approval for a yacht arrival in Vanuatu, spreadsheets from Iraqi oilfields, children's book reports, pictures of dogs meant to be sent to veterinarians, etc etc.

Saying he “took it from them” is outright dishonest.

I don't use $SERVICE. I never want to use $SERVICE. I certainly don't consent to $SERVICE having my contact info because some acquaintance/friend/family member who doesn't know any better tapped "allow" on a button. But because it's allowed, any number of immoral companies like Facebook have my info, even though I've made a conscious decision never to use them due to their privacy violations.

What happened? I logged into an Apple service from the browser on my work computer. I should have known better, I get captchas everywhere when coming from our corporate network, so it's clearly on someone's shitlist. Well, even though my authentication was successful, including the verify-pin-on-device-you-already-own part, Apple said "this is a suspicious connection" and immediately logged out every last device, invalidated all sessions, invalidated the password so I had to change it. I was still feeling the pain from that for a week or more afterwards.

And now I have a simpler Apple password than the XKCD-style one I had been using, because I got tired of typing it in over-and-over-and-over-and-over.

So you see, your honor, as a service provider, we did no wrong.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05hacking-t.html