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How to find someone who mistakenly uses your email adress halfway around the world?

Lukraak_Sisser

Philosopher
L
Joined
Aug 20, 2009
Messages
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I've been using gmail for a long time now, and to prevent malicious access I've set up that system that gives warnings on your phone if someone tries to access your account from unexpected places.

In the last year I've had numerous times that someone from New-Zealand tried to reset the password, which I've blocked.
At first I thought it was a hacker, but recently I've also gotten links to subscribe to various sites in NZ, commercials targeted at the same name (not mine) and today I got about 20 links to subscribe to TVNZ, with repeated password attemtps.
I strongly suspect someone in NZ has a mail adress that is very similar to mine but a slightly different way of writing it.
Thing is, if I google the name I get in adverts combined with my last name I only get a hit in Australia, and given the dutch migration to NZ mid last century my last name appears to be very common there.
Does anyone have any tips on how I could find out who this person is so we can clear this up? I feel bad for them as their attempts to do something during lockdown end up in my email adress.
 
The only methods I can think are:
do the reset emails have an IP address? I think new signin ones do?
Can google give you the IP address the request came from?

In either case with the IP address you can find the ISP and send them a message saying that a user at that IP keeps trying to reset your password. Long shot tbh.
 
My other half has the same problem, with possibly more than one other person signing up for accounts and using her email address.

It’s happened to me, too. I got notification of some bank accounts being opened with US banks. Organisations don’t seem to be set up to deal with it, either. When I’ve tried to notify them that someone is using my email address, they ask me to sign in to the account and report it, which I obviously can’t do. In one case, I did get access to the account that had been opened by using the reset password option, which sent the details to my email account, and then submitted a report. (I didn’t have access to any money in that instance.)

I think, from what I’ve found so far, it’s not been malicious reuse of my email address, but people mis-typing their own address, though it beggars belief that they can do it so persistently.

As for tracing the person, we haven’t been successful, I think the only point of contact is the sites they’re signing up to, if you’re able to report to them (as I said, in some cases it’s nigh-on impossible).
 
Wudang said:
The only methods I can think are:
do the reset emails have an IP address? I think new signin ones do?
Can google give you the IP address the request came from?

In either case with the IP address you can find the ISP and send them a message saying that a user at that IP keeps trying to reset your password. Long shot tbh.
Click to expand...

No, the only IP adresses in there are the ones from the sites being used by the other party (NZTV, pinterest etc), so that does not work.
The reset requests came trough a phone popup where I then declined and no clue if I can trace those again, I'll look into that, maybe something is there.
 
zooterkin said:
My other half has the same problem, with possibly more than one other person signing up for accounts and using her email address.

It’s happened to me, too. I got notification of some bank accounts being opened with US banks. Organisations don’t seem to be set up to deal with it, either. When I’ve tried to notify them that someone is using my email address, they ask me to sign in to the account and report it, which I obviously can’t do. In one case, I did get access to the account that had been opened by using the reset password option, which sent the details to my email account, and then submitted a report. (I didn’t have access to any money in that instance.)

I think, from what I’ve found so far, it’s not been malicious reuse of my email address, but people mis-typing their own address, though it beggars belief that they can do it so persistently.

As for tracing the person, we haven’t been successful, I think the only point of contact is the sites they’re signing up to, if you’re able to report to them (as I said, in some cases it’s nigh-on impossible).
Click to expand...

I don't think its malicious either, but gmails policy of not allowing a second address to be opened with dots at various places should have warned the users earlier. It might be a typo somewhere else, but 15 times for the same address? Maybe they just re-clicked the same button.

And I personally don't mind, I can delete the mails, it's more that I feel bad that they are trying to do something and are probably getting frustrated that their services do not reply, while I get all those mails.
 
I have a good dozen namesakes around the globe who struggle with the idea that malbui.surname@gmail.com is my email address, not theirs. Depending on context I might reply to people trying to contact them to say that they have the wrong address; other times I shrug and delete. It can be mildly entertaining to observe their shopping habits, to be fair.
 
malbui said:
I have a good dozen namesakes around the globe who struggle with the idea that malbui.surname@gmail.com is my email address, not theirs. Depending on context I might reply to people trying to contact them to say that they have the wrong address; other times I shrug and delete. It can be mildly entertaining to observe their shopping habits, to be fair.
Click to expand...

Are you ever tempted to reply "Later. Interpol are closing in."?
 
Why is this decided to be someone making a mistake as opposed to the activity of a bot?

IOW, why does this have to be a person?
 
I don't think there's a way to do it. I think you've basically been given a tiny window into someone else's life. You can peer dimly through the crack, but that's about all you can do. Like watching a supernova that happened a million years ago.
 
Wudang said:
I'd assume it wasn't a bot due to the repeated attempts to subscribe to NZTV. It seems more consistent with a human actor with a mis-remembered email.
Click to expand...
We think differently.

For myself, repeated attempts using an incorrect email address suggests a non-human actor.
 
William Parcher said:
We think differently.

For myself, repeated attempts using an incorrect email address suggests a non-human actor.
Click to expand...

It could go either way. A lot of people simply don't have the skill to reason themselves out of a broken computer usage pattern. They know what button to push, and they know it's supposed to work, and that's as far as they go.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/a-quarter-of-adults-can-t-use-a-computer/

Multiple attempts at an inhuman rate (e.g., several per second) suggests a bot to me. Multiple attempts over the course of a week (or an hour) is almost certainly a human.
 
My wife had an email address of Last.First but one of her friends called me to ask her email address and I said First.Last by mistake. This was used by that entire friend group on e-vite for years.

The person with First.Last made a joke of replying to all of these evites with weird responses. I thought it was hilarious, my wife did not. Her friends were more in her camp than mine.

Common replies were:
- is this catered or do I need to eat first?
- I'll be plus 22 this time, family is in town, all are looking forward to it.
- is Carol coming? I can maybe make it if she isn't there.
 
I had two attempts to reset my Google password last night. Google let me know that it was via a computer identified as being in Germany.

I’m assuming it’s simply someone mistyping but I’ve changed all my important passwords anyway.
 
Wudang said:
Repeated attempts at what? Subscribing to a service via an account you don't have access to? My experience of end users suggests otherwise.
Click to expand...

The attempts to subscribe to the TV channel to me seemed the work of someone that mistyped and then got frustrated.
It started with several links that sent the 'validate your email', then went to three emails with 'reset your password' and then stopped, all within the timespan of an hour.
I've interpreted that as someone not all that computer savvy that made a mistake and did not know what to do.
Combined with the subscription to pinterest which seems to follow all sorts of ways to outdoor farm, which seems an odd thing for a bot to do.

The attempts are also few, far between and random and only happened during a time that new zealand was actually awake.

I'm still not sure why they did not get the gmail warning that the account was already in use, but I guess theprestige is right and there is not much I can do.
 
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