@siracusa Oh that's nice, I have this issue a lot with my very simple outlook account. It can be exhausting to undo all the sign ups. My email has been accidentally used to sign up for everything from christian political parties to obscure dating sites and even some purchase orders. Multiple times I've been forced to do a password reset and take over another persons account, because there is no other way to fix it. Even called some of them when their info was on orders etc.

@siracusa I’ve had my GMail since it launched and for over a decade someone keeps signing up for things with the same name, just without the dot between first and last name. Still comes to me. I know his name, he’s a pilot, and likes wine a lot. Slowly building a profile to hunt him down :)

@siracusa
1) oh joy, another gifted identity.
2) this wouldn't be an issue if companies bothered to verify an email address before using it.

@siracusa I have my first name at gmail. My favourite mails are all the Austrian food deliveries and the luxury hotels in Dubai. (Different people, I am sure.)

Got gmail access pretty early and I have my very common name and surname (in Spain) address and it is virtually unusable between spam and misspelling

@siracusa I get so may of these. One from PayPal.ca and I can’t fix it because it requires a SSN to modify (probably a good idea for a financial site). But why explicit email verification isn’t required to create the account in the first place I don’t know.

@siracusa There's one guy from Brooklyn (currently living in Virginia) who has been misusing my Gmail account since about 2007. My theory is it got into his auto-complete prefs and keeps coming up. I have learned a disturbing amount about him. At one point I had his home address from a grocery receipt (he's gluten intolerant), and I considered mailing him to ask him to stop, but somehow that just seemed weird. He's since moved, and I don't have the new one (yet!)

@siracusa I have a guy who apparently gets lonely every 6 months and signs up for dating sites. Only one has ever actually validated emails and provided a simple opt-out.

I have found that he stops signing up for them for a while if I "forget" his password and reset it, and update his profile to say he is 7’3", has 38 dogs and a ferret, and is looking to exclusively date WWII veterans.

@siracusa I wish Apple Brasil and Connecticut Water did the same.

@siracusa Nothing is so perfect™

@siracusa Instagram does that too, but any time I've ever clicked the link saying it's not my account, it gives me an error. There is a guy who had been trying to reset his account linked to a variation of my email for years.

@siracusa I have come to the conclusion that I made a poor choice for my email because I get this multiple times daily. And FYI Google has a “disavow account” link they include for this, too. It shows up when someone sets me up as a trusted email. Very nice.

@siracusa Instagram does that too, but any time I've ever clicked the link saying it's not my account, it gives me an error. There is a guy who had been trying to reset his account linked to a variation of my email without dots in the username for years.

@siracusa Best I can tell, there are at least 3 different people with my name that don't know what their email address is.

@siracusa What’s the better option than a “here” link?

@siracusa At my job I had many complaints because I DIDN'T use a "click here"