Noticed an email that was addressed to a friend/acquaintance of mine, from an online retailer, in one of my inboxes. One of those automated “you seem to have left items behind in your basket—do you still want to complete your order” emails.
Bizarre thing is that his name and surname was listed (he shares the same first name as me), but his surname—which starts with the same letter as mine, is different. But the email associated with it, is an alias I had years ago for my iCloud email address!
I started poking around, and found some more—all having come in over the past few hours, from different shops local and overseas, addressed to other strangers seemingly sharing my first name, but with different surnames (although also starting with the same letter as mine)—all with my alias email address.
That alias used to be my primary back in 2014–but I then changed it to a Gmail email address (but switched the original iCloud email address to an alias associated with the new one).
So, seemingly, others using iCloud accounts with [first name]_[first letter of surname]@icloud.com, are coming to me, albeit with their names as being listed as recipient in the address line!
I presume this is not “normal”? But is it unheard of? Should I reach out to Apple Support? How? Or, just ignore?
Data broker for sure. I still get spam solicitations for a long-closed LLC I owned, some of which are spoofed to look like they come from relatives who never had anything to do with the company.
SpamSieve is the best solution. I’ve found that solutions that claim to stop data brokers from using your data are worthless.
If a thousand years from now archaeologists study our email they will have no clue what’s going on.
I sometimes get mails on my gmail account (firstname.prefix.lastname@gmail.com) that are intended for someone with the exact same name. Most of the time the dots in the first part of the address are omited, but that resolves to the same account.
I never found out what his address is.
You could ask your friend whether or not he uses icloud and/or was shopping at that retailer to check the databroker option.
The amusing (or maybe sad) ones I get occasionally are perfectly legitimate companies welcoming me to an account because the real person who opened the account misspelled their email address (probably twice), and the misspelling is my address. For years, the concierge at a tony block of flats in Kensington would write to say my package was delivered at the porter. I told them “not mine”, they would apologize, and a few weeks later repeat.
This happens to me frequently. Turns out it’s a guy in the UK, we had a bit of dialog after I started getting contracts for real estate deals outside London. There’s someone in Africa or the Middle East who also fell into the mistaken address scenario but I haven’t gotten those emails in a while.
My name is a medium level of common. It’s been very interesting getting other people’s Gmail over the years. I’ve corresponded with several of them, usually because the person who accidentally emailed me explains which middle initial they forgot. In a couple of cases I texted them because their phone number was in sensitive/personal documents.
A favorite was a guy’s pool cleaning service. I got a photo of his pool every week for a year. Watching the floaty swan float to a different part of the pool provided some joy on pool day. I still think about that pool. He recently went on a cruise, too, if he managed to find his cruise tickets that were emailed to me.
It is also possible to have someone enter your email address in a sign-up form when intending to enter a slightly different one. My wife got a lot of email intended for someone else for quite awhile. Of course, since they used a wrong email, there was no way to contact them.
However, most of yours sounds like garden-variety spam…
This happens to me pretty much daily. I have a short Gmail address based on my name and I get emails for everyone with a similar name. Everything from legal documents, blueprints, credit card statements, personal photos and more. I’ve been tempted to start a Tumblr with all this crap. If I was interested in committing fraud, I’ve certainly got enough personal info from people.
The more annoying emails are ones that you can’t unsubscribe from without logging in first. Good thing I get their password reset emails. I’ve cancelled people’s accounts or changed their name and email addresses to stop the mess. Unfortunately I still get credit card statement emails for one guy and I can’t reset his password without knowing some more info. (Damn secure financial websites!)
Thank you all. l will check things properly. But good to know about how easily this could happen. FWIW, seems only to have been the several received yesterday.
I do for some, but I would have to add new rules every day. The other problem is that some of these are companies I do have business with. For instance, I have a Venmo account and I get emails about another R Bender’s Venmo credit card.
Here’s a new one I got today. From DSCO Jail, this was a scanned PDF:
