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cimoreneA no-doubt distant relative who shares my first initial and my mother's maiden name signed up for match.com and meetup.com a few weeks ago and accidentally used my gmail address as the signup address.
Both of these sites fail to require a confirmation through a link in the signup email, which I, at least, remember used to be the standard. They allowed her to set up her entire profile, upload a photo, register a bunch of interests, and sign up for a raft of email notifications, with no checking that it was actually her email address.
I noticed this a couple of weeks ago and assumed someone had signed me up as a prank, but when I clicked through the links in the signup emails (both had already been followed, as I mentioned WITHOUT MY CONFIRMATION, by about 40+ additional emails in less than a week at the time), neither one of them had any email notification controls that I could get at without signing into the account with its password, nor did they have any contact information for the website or support that I could have used to register a complaint.
I got bored of trying to find a 'contact' link at the websites a couple of weeks ago and put it off, so when I went back in today there were hundreds more emails from these spam factories littering my inbox. There was no way to remove my email from the account, no way to contact anyone at the site, and no way to contact the person who set up the account and let them know: all site communications would just come to my email.
My sister googled them and found out that they're a supporter of the would-be fascist malignant narcissist kleptocrat currently in the process of occupying the US presidency, so I abandoned my attempts to contact them and used the change-password links to delete both accounts.
[INSERT OK SIGN EMOJI HERE]
But footnote: remember that if these spam-mail-generating social networking sites weren't trash they'd require confirmation that it was the correct email in the first place and none of this would've happened.
Both of these sites fail to require a confirmation through a link in the signup email, which I, at least, remember used to be the standard. They allowed her to set up her entire profile, upload a photo, register a bunch of interests, and sign up for a raft of email notifications, with no checking that it was actually her email address.
I noticed this a couple of weeks ago and assumed someone had signed me up as a prank, but when I clicked through the links in the signup emails (both had already been followed, as I mentioned WITHOUT MY CONFIRMATION, by about 40+ additional emails in less than a week at the time), neither one of them had any email notification controls that I could get at without signing into the account with its password, nor did they have any contact information for the website or support that I could have used to register a complaint.
I got bored of trying to find a 'contact' link at the websites a couple of weeks ago and put it off, so when I went back in today there were hundreds more emails from these spam factories littering my inbox. There was no way to remove my email from the account, no way to contact anyone at the site, and no way to contact the person who set up the account and let them know: all site communications would just come to my email.
My sister googled them and found out that they're a supporter of the would-be fascist malignant narcissist kleptocrat currently in the process of occupying the US presidency, so I abandoned my attempts to contact them and used the change-password links to delete both accounts.
[INSERT OK SIGN EMOJI HERE]
But footnote: remember that if these spam-mail-generating social networking sites weren't trash they'd require confirmation that it was the correct email in the first place and none of this would've happened.
(no subject)
Date: 2 Oct 2018 05:45 pm (UTC)I feel for you--sometime during the last administration I signed on to a petition at whitehouse.gov, and of course the new puppet regime installed in the building has been harvesting emails from that for reelection email. Glad you were able to get off those sites, but what a pain in the butt.
(no subject)
Date: 3 Oct 2018 02:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2 Oct 2018 09:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 3 Oct 2018 02:55 pm (UTC)