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Comment by elif | Hacker News Reader

not only this but experian lets users sign up without confirming their email address.

someone registered on MY email address and I had to spend about 7 hours on multiple phone calls over a period of 5 weeks in order to get control of an account with my email address, all to turn off their incessant spam.

if you read their TOS technically you have to send a notarized letter with copy of photo ID social security number etc. etc. but thankfully i finally reached a human with a hint of reasonability.

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This seems to have happened to me somehow. I was forced to sign up to unfreeze my credit report (after freezing it years ago without an account) and now it has 2FA configured with a phone number that isn't mine. I have no idea how that happened and now I'm concerned that a stranger has control over my account. Hooray!

I tried calling to reset my password, which pointed me back to the website. The only other option is to reset it by mail. Amazing.

Edit: and to top it off, the reset password page references a security question & PIN, without ever asking for those. >If you do not know your security question or PIN, you will need to contact customer care to reset your password.

Edit 2: I just created a new account with a different email without a hitch. I got an email to the original address saying that there was a change to my account settings, leading me to believe that creating a new account simply changed the email address. Still no email confirmation though.

> if you read their TOS technically you have to send a notarized letter with copy of photo ID social security number etc. etc. but thankfully i finally reached a human with a hint of reasonability.

Does that mean if someone signs you up under a false name, it's impossible to unsubscribe under the rules-as-written?

In some dark future, you will need to sign up for all websites just to prevent someone for doing this very thing. "It's not our fault you didn't sign up and allowed a fraudster to do it."

A TOS doesn't apply if you didn't sign up.

Now picture a Kafkaesque nightmare where you have to prove to the company spamming you that you didn't sign up for their spams...

I hope that wasn't me! To avoid their spam I changed my email address in their system to a bunch of random letters/numbers a year or 2 ago. I made it pretty long. If that was your email, I apologize.

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