from the burrs-on-the-heel-of-the-foot-would-be-mercy dept.
It appears that two weeks ago my email address got into the wrong database. Since that time there have been continuing attempts to access my accounts and create new accounts in my name. I have received emails asking me to click the link below to confirm I want to create an account with Twitter, Facebook, Apple Games Center, Facebook mobile account, and numerous pornographic sites. I have not attempted to create accounts on any of these services. I have also received 16 notices from Apple about how to reset my Apple ID. I am guessing these notices are being automatically generated in response to too many failed login attempts. At this point I have no reason to believe any of my accounts have been compromised but I see no good response.
-A Slashdot user
Something very similar to this situation has happened to me a few months ago. In my situation it turned out to be a 12 year old boy with the same name as me, trying to recover access to my gmail account. I could immagine a fresh internet user attempt to register their name as their email address, (that is what I did), but for this kid, I had already registered the email address. He persisted by making multiple attempts over a period of two weeks.
It wasn’t until later on did I realize the kid had signed up to some ‘red light’ dating websites, and had used my email address for the user registration email address. At first thought I thought someone was trying to actually cause harm to my identity by registering me to smutty websites, and attempting to recover existing accounts I had already had over many years. The kid made a major mistake in his attempt s which was he had accosited his cellphone number with his twitter account. When I found out after tracing all the password recoveries, and newly received newsletters from this account signup, he had filled in the profiles with his information.
So it did not take long for me to realize I wasn’t actually a victim of an attack, bur more of a misunderstood kid who didn’t know there would be another Joseph Forbes in another state who registered gmail and twitter accounts. After patiently waiting and hoping the kid would stop trying, to recover access to my account, I had to call him.
To my surprise, I ended up with the kid’s mother who answered the phone, which I proceeded to inform her of my discoveries. The mother didn’t really understand much of what I was saying, but she did confirm her son’s name, and that he has a computer. After getting off the phone with the mother, I just kept a record of the event, and if I ever have any more problems, I know who my first suspect will be.
I ended up realizing the kid was just trying to look up porn, and didn’t realize someone had the same name, and already registered the gmail and twitter accounts. Now, I just have to get the two capstone students who are trying to start up “JFTITAN” as a corp, and this one dude on skype. I was a bit late on the skype user hijacking exploit. MS fixed it, but only LONG after did I know about the isutation I could have reported one of my accounts.
