Sounds very sloppy. Could it be a regression, or was it always this way? I wonder if this could be used to spearphish or scam someone somehow?
(summary: troublemaker registers 'Railtrack Ltd' as UK limited company after dissolution of the previous Railtrack, which owned the country's rail network; long succession of solicitors, land agents etc. fail to do basic research and send legal demands to this new Railtrack Ltd; merriment ensues)
Once a guy set up his motion activated webcam to send me snapshots whenever it saw something, that was creepy.
But I do love my vanity address, so I'll live with it! :-)
In South Africa, someone with the same initials added his wife's initial before the last name and once I figured that out, I've been able to correct realtors and banks. (I've gotten copies of leases and loan documents.) He and I have exchanged a few emails about it. His wife even invited me to their twins birthday party.
Health insurance form and other information for a child
School report for a child
Mortgage information
Book library late notice
Nail product order confirmation
Multiple confirmations of job applications
PS4 account information
Various invitations to family gatherings
etc.
Whenever I could find the relevant information, I contacted the various people that send me the original email to correct the information. Most did not respond (including the father of a child with the above mentioned information who was copied on one email).
Sometimes the emails contained an unsubscribe button (yay) but, upon trying to use it, it asked for a password (which I obviously did not have). So, off to the spam folder...
So, I completely agree that Amazon's registration process is very flawed ... but there seems to be a lot of clueless people and businesses out there as well.
The only one where I actually put in quite a bit of effort was when I was getting the email notifications for downloading someone's CME (Continuing Medical Education) certificates as they completed courses. It turned out to be a real pain - I could find the person, but couldn't get hold of them. Approaching retirement age, rural, etc. - I think I finally ended up leaving voicemail on their son's # and with their church, though it probably would've been easier at that point to just sit down and actually write and mail a letter.
And the only one that really annoys me is the gun nut. I get more crap from whacked out black helicopter EEEEBOOOOOLLLAAAAA idiots now...... And he actually gave them money, so they just don't go away.
Yes, including some that should really know better.
I see this issue with more than one major bank.
>"Whenever I could find the relevant information, I contacted the various people that send me the original email to correct the information."
That's brave. I've had nothing but grief with this - some combination of "Who are you?", "Leave me alone." and "You stole my email address!" in every case.
Contacting the sender isn't much better.
In the case of medical / financial information it seems to me there should be an easy way to report this to some sort of regulatory authority.
I've gotten American express travel itineraries, invoices for home furnishings, etc.
It doesn't matter how little time I have on my hands, I really want to do that now. Or maybe an app that lets them live chat me?
Some folks have itchy trigger fingers....
(Oh, I know. I forgot to phrase it as "This" followed by a personal anecdote supporting the assertion in question. Ah, humbled again.)
(Yup, expecting karma loss on this. Fun and games, no eyes at risk.)
If you delete the account, you have two of the three parties' agreements documented. You need all three, in order to be able to claim that nobody's rights are being infringed. This can be done by making a good faith effort to notice the third party via multiple forms of communication. Even if they don't get to the party, you need to at least make the attempt. Send a first notice, wait ten days, if no response, send a second notice. If no response, consider that your acquiescence, and delete the account.
As a side note, this is how customer service becomes terrible. Security audits turn up processes that allow social engineering attacks, so they lock down the customer service tools. Agents get confused, so they implement rigid procedures (i.e. you can be fired for going off-script). These rigid procedures can be executed by a trained monkey at minimum wage, so agent quality declines. Rinse and repeat for a few decades and you get Comcast customer service.
Still .. Hanlon's razor is in my head :-)
Edit: if the customer-support-tools really are locked down, shouldn't they have a procedure to escalate ? Telling a user to break the law to help himself out should not be standard practice after all.
Of course, one could argue that there's only so much effort OP should have undertake to get this problem resolved; dealing with chat-support roulette until you find someone competent might be pushing those expectations.
Eventually they stopped, but no thanks to ebay.
Why is email address verification not more standard?
If you delete their account you may be committing a crime somehow, just logging in may be committing a crime, not worth it.
It's some ratio of lack of imagination:care.
I called paypal last week to remove an expired card from my account. At some point, Paypal has started doing background checks to come up with security questions after the fact, all three of which have to be answered correctly in order to have a discussion about your account.
One of the questions was my father's wife's (who he married when I was in my late teens and both lived in a different state) birthday month. Another was a friend's street address that I used to get an Oregon ID, and slept on her floor for about 3 months 20 years ago.
The operator was sympathetic, but what could she do? She had no way to escalate, and there was no contingency for if a question was asked that the customer may never have had the answer to. It's just sloppy.
wtf? paypal keeps pestering me to link it to my bank account, with the incentive that i won't have to pay fees to transfer money to friends. i've held off out of a vague feeling that they'll find some way or the other to screw me over once i do; stories like this make me happier that i've listened to that instinct.
Once, my wife had someone setup some sort of financial account with her email (CC, IIRC). They didn't verify the address!
My wife called and tried to do the right thing, but the people on the phone just didn't understand the concept that the email address was wrong. It simply wouldn't compute for them. Since my wife had the email address, she /must/ have been the account holder. Right?
Log into their account, and order, to be delivered to their address, something that gives them the first letter of your message. For instance http://www.amazon.com/Sterling-Silver-Initial-Pendant-Neckla...
Then do it over and over to send them a message that their email address is wrong. You'll have to space them out by a few days, so they arrive in order.
Somehow none of them bothered with email authentication.
It seems as if, technically, these sites (including Amazon in this scenario) are engaging in illegal spam practices. But who knows.
Clearly, someone made a mistake. This is not some official policy sanctioned by Bezos and handed down from above, despite what the clickbait headline reads.
I had to then go through Adobe support to reset the country, as I couldn't do it on my own.
I too was surprised that there was no process to verify the email address. What a joke!
It is especially frustrating that nearly every time this happens it comes from a "do not reply" address within the company so you can't do anything about it.
First, it needs to become very obvious that Amazon goofed in not verifying that the kindle owner owns the email address.
Second, the person with access to the account needs to rack up so many charges that they max out the credit card.
By making "not verifying email addresses" an expensive product mistake, this problem can be solved quite quickly.
