Has anyone ever made an email account in your name?

GarIT

I got an email a few mins ago saying someone created an Gmail account and made my hotmail address their backup account, straight away I changed their password, removed the assocation with my account and closed their account. Just after I started thinking I should wait a few weeks to see what they did before I changed the password. It would have been interesting but its too late now.

I'm slightly suspicious though because I have a semi-common first name but a double barrel 2nd name that is made up of two rare second names, and the email account was the same as my 7 accounts but with a 3 at the end.

Big Lar

Yeah me too

Galroy_Tech

Perhaps it was a mistake by the person creating the gmail account.

Solair

If you've an email address that's possibly similar to others eg a version of a common name, it's most likely a typo.

28064212

GarIT wrote: »

I got an email a few mins ago saying someone created an Gmail account and made my hotmail address their backup account, straight away I changed their password, removed the assocation with my account and closed their account. Just after I started thinking I should wait a few weeks to see what they did before I changed the password. It would have been interesting but its too late now.

I'm slightly suspicious though because I have a semi-common first name but a double barrel 2nd name that is made up of two rare second names, and the email account was the same as my 7 accounts but with a 3 at the end.

Most likely scammers and/or spammers. Otherwise why would they make your hotmail address their backup? They were probably hoping you'd confirm it without knowing or caring. IT would then give their spam account some credibility and less likely to be shut down by Gmail for spamming

CreepingDeath

GarIT wrote: »

I got an email a few mins ago saying someone created an Gmail account and made my hotmail address their backup account, straight away I changed their password, removed the assocation with my account and closed their account.

Technically, the new GMail account wasn't yours to login, alter and close down.
Was there not some link in the e-mail to say "if this isn't you then report this e-mail to GMail" ?

GarIT

CreepingDeath wrote: »

Technically, the new GMail account wasn't yours to login, alter and close down.
Was there not some link in the e-mail to say "if this isn't you then report this e-mail to GMail" ?

Not that I recall. All I saw was a link saying click her to verify your email adress. There probably was but it was quicker just getting rid of it, the only fast way to take my email address away from their account which involved changing the password was to just change it in their setings, and because I changed the password the account was useless to them.

If it was a genuine person they could have just set up another new account without my email as their backup.

I doubt it was a typo, I basically made up my second name myself. Its gone now though and thats the end of it really.

Galroy_Tech

You know what? Now that I think about it, it may have been phishing. If you had clicked on the link to verify your email it may have brought you to a mock website so that they could have gotten your hotmail password.
Or maybe not.