AT&T dutifully asked 'me' to confirm my email address. I did not.
Aaaand... now I still get all of his account email. So what's the point.
Years. I've closed netflix accounts, I've sent them sms from their telco's webtext portal asking them to stop, and still there's a koneill out there who is very, very confused about why his email doesn't work. I know where he lives, I know what pizza he ordered, I know his name, his phone number, I just don't know his email address. And apparently, neither does he.
The number of services that fail at email validation (or keep sending you reminders, forever, that you haven't validated), blows my mind. For such a simple process, that seems to exist on every single service I (and koneill) sign up for, it has a surprisingly low rate of successful implementations.
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.
Not a lawyer, but feels like you could be sued for a) reaching out and clearly mentioning you have some very private information.
How does it work for a paper mail - from what I understand it could be illegal to open any letter originated to some other person's name.
As dysfunctional as the legal system seems to be at times, I'd be pretty surprised if she could find a lawyer willing to try that. At the very least, she'd half to pay a fair amount out of pocket just to initiate the suit, and this is someone who already hasn't shown much persistence in just getting the email address corrected with her provider.
A lawyer would presumably tell her that a case against me would certainly fail, and the healthcare provider has much deeper pockets. Go after them.
> How does it work for a paper mail - from what I understand it could be illegal to open any letter originated to some other person's name.
This is a federal law called "Obstruction of Correspondence" and it is fairly specific to USPS mail. It applies to letters & packages that are either in a postal facility (including the mailbox) or have transited through it. It does not apply to email.
Unless he was trying to extort her he’s done nothing wrong.
Her healthcare provider, on the other hand, could be in some hot shit.
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.
Sounds like a feature to me!
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.
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.
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.
I get email invoice every time Orkin goes out to spray a house in North Carolina. No option to say "this isn't me", and I've given up calling to tell them after multiple cycles.
The elderly German couple that would email their train itinerary so that their cousin could pick them up at the station. I would politely reply that I am not their cousin, and consequently their cousin would not be at the station. And six months later we start again.
Someone in Canada with first initial + last name that results in my last name kept getting wired money, and I would get in email with instructions. Of course no "not me" option. I haven't seen one of those in a while, hopefully he figured it out.
And so many more stories of people with my last name or close to it happily sending me their email... But I've had the address for practically forever, and really don't want to let it go.
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.