Why does it seem like other people are using my email address? (gmail, work)

[chompy]

This is so bizarre to me that I feel weird even asking, but it's been bothering me for a long time. I have a fairly generic email address (firstinitial.lastname@gmail, last name is not well known but isn't extremely uncommon), and I constantly get emails for people with the same first initial and last name as I have. Say my name were John Smith. I get emails all the time for "Jane Smith", "Jerry Smith", "Jennifer Smith", etc... Some of it is filled with extremely personal information, and sometimes I even get private correspondence from apparent friends and family members filled with photos and life updates. A couple of days ago I got about 20 emails from Apple asking me to confirm an Apple ID account for a different person who was trying to sign in with my email.

I change my passwords often and check my accounts for suspicious activity regularly, and nothing seems out of order, so my only two guesses are that some people just don't know what their email address is or people are using my address to sign up for websites or give to retailers so their inboxes don't get filled with spam. Am I off base here? Is there something more malicious going on? I just want to see if anyone else has experienced this.

[plwhit]

Sounds like someone needs to be more careful filling out web forms. You go to one website and sign up for something that website turns around and shares your email address with other businesses. Something you did in the past has gotten you on businesses mailing lists.

Best thing you can do is start a new gmail account and only use that email address with friends and family.

There cannot exist multiple exact same email addresses no more than there can be multiple houses on the same street with the exact same street address.

[TurcoLoco]

Common names often get hit due to being "common" or well known.
Regardless of how common your name is, spam bots can auto populate variations of a name from an e-mail address in order to increase the possibility of hitting more prospects. I called them name proximity spam.
This might be due to partial capture of a legit e-mail address, then the spam bots fill in the unknowns using all and any possible name variations.

My decoy Hotmail address points to my fake Hotmail profile were I am a 62 yo Jewish female named Jane Doe. Some of the spam I get at that e-mail have Jane or Jane Doe in the subject line so it is not hard to figure out e-mail linked profiles are being scanned by web spiders and used for spam.

[plwhit]

Originally Posted by TurcoLoco

My decoy Hotmail address points to my fake Hotmail profile were I am a 62 yo Jewish female named Jane Doe. Some of the spam I get at that e-mail have Jane or Jane Doe in the subject line so it is not hard to figure out e-mail linked profiles are being scanned by web spiders and used for spam.

A Jewish hot babe huh?

[TurcoLoco]

Originally Posted by plwhit

A Jewish hot babe huh?

Funny thing is, for a while I made myself a single older guy to minimize adult spam, I started getting these:





Then I said, to hell with this and became an older Jewish lady, then started getting these:




You just can't win!

[Marissy]

I have had something similar happen to me recently. I made a yahoo account with my first initial, middle initial, and last name a while back. Now, I am starting to get Verizon and Time Warner bills and receipts from some chick named Itercia.
:/

[elnina]

Originally Posted by TurcoLoco

Funny thing is, for a while I made myself a single older guy to minimize adult spam, I started getting these:
Then I said, to hell with this and became an older Jewish lady, then started getting these:
You just can't win!

My email profile reveal practically nothing and I still get offers for Viagra , Christian Singles , Quick Cash , Weight Loss , Penis Growth Free trial samples , Funeral Offers , Back to school savings and Nigerian Scams .

[TurcoLoco]

Originally Posted by elnina

My email profile reveal practically nothing and I still get offers for Viagra , Christian Singles , Quick Cash , Weight Loss , Penis Growth Free trial samples , Funeral Offers , Back to school savings and Nigerian Scams .

Yeah, at this point my decoy Hotmail account AKA Spam Magnet address get all those and then some.
Any time I have to use an e-mail address and I know the site, company, etc. will either spam me or will share my address for marketing purposes ($$) with their affiliates/3rd parties (aka EveryFreakingBody), I use the dummy e-mail account. Since I still get a little bit of legit e-mails so I have to go through ton of spam and filter good ones out which is a lot of fun.


Crazy-evil side of me wants to starts forwarding the viagra offers to funeral offers, quick cash ones to Nigerian scammers, etc. Who knows, that teach 'em not to mess with the Krazie Turk!

[Soup Sandwich]

I have had crazy spam with hotmail. Gmail, however, I have not. In fact, my hotmail account was spam hacked twice while I still had the Gmail account, with the same strong password.
If I were you guys, I'd just flop on Hotmail unless you need a live account for something specific. Otherwise migrate elsewhere. I've had nothing but issues with live/hotmail.

Edit:
If you are getting spammed no matter which email provider you use, you really need to stop giving your email address out to random sources, and definitely don't post it on the web... there are automated crawlers that grab that stuff up in a hot second.

[time2play]

back when I used hotmail it was kind of scary at times - some personal emails were marked as read when I know I didn't read them. this was back in the day when I was foolish enough to have an all purpose email address (mailing lists, friends family work other associates all in one!)

but if I were you I'd just shut it down, maybe re-process your PC, get a new one, change browsing habits a little (separate browser for random surfing etc), maybe get 2 layer authentication for verifying you as the owner of your email whenever you sign in.