I don't want to play.

January 18, 2012 12:40 PM

Why would someone use my email address for this?

I just got an email from a website called Gameranger. Here is the email:

from: GameRanger Accounts ✆ [e-mail]
Jan 15 (3 days ago)

Your new GameRanger account must be activated before it can be used:
Nickname: $$$PWN$$$
Real Name: cameron
Email Address: [e-mail]

Click this link to activate your new account:
http://www.GameRanger.com/activate/3C9535ED

GameRanger - play your friends online
http://www.GameRanger.com

You are receiving this message because this email address
([e-mail]) was used to register a new GameRanger account. If
you did not sign up for this account, you may ignore this message and
the account will expire by itself.

I am ignoring this, but why would someone use my email address to signup for a game site. They will not be able to access the game site without my authorization. I have gotten a few of these in the past from different game sites. Is the person hoping I will just click the authorization link? If so, why don't they just make a sock-puppet Gmail account? What am I missing in this scam?

posted by fifilaru to Computers & Internet (22 answers total)

Someone with bad spelling and a similar email address to yours likes games.
posted by emilyw at 12:42 PM on January 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

Seconding emilyw. This looks like an accident. If it's a GMail account, there's likely someone else with a similar one to yours. They either mistyped their own address repeatedly or just plain forgot what it was.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 12:45 PM on January 18, 2012

Case in point, you misspelled your example email address "myemaladdress". :)
posted by SemiSophos at 12:46 PM on January 18, 2012 [9 favorites]

Maybe it is spam from the gaming company trying to get you to sign up. Or someone misspelled their email.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 12:49 PM on January 18, 2012

It is possible that Cameron cannot spell his own name and put down yours instead. I get emails all the time from some guy with the same last name and first name initial as me. Sucks for him, his Xbox live account *still* hasn't been confirmed.

Just ignore it.
posted by motsque at 12:52 PM on January 18, 2012

Not every weird email is a scam. Some people just cvan't type.
posted by rtha at 12:53 PM on January 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

I got an email from donorschoose thanking me for my donation of $15 [which I didn't make] using gift cards.
I contacted them and they said: Many of our funding partners place limits on the number of cards that can be redeemed per user, and some users attempt to get around this policy by using the email addresses of acquaintances without their knowledge or consent.

It looks like this gift card was used to support the classroom of Mrs. XXX at XXXX Elem School in XXX. Perhaps you know someone connected with that teacher or that school?
----
[they were more helpful than that, but the rest was irrelevant]
Maybe some sort of weird limit as described above-and then done by someone who is your acquaintance??
posted by atomicstone at 1:01 PM on January 18, 2012

I know this sounds crazy, but you would be surprised how many people don't know their own email address. Not just mistyping it, but honestly think that their email address is something else. Obviously, when they email other people, they don't have this problem -- because those people have an email to respond to. But when they have to fill out a form or give their address to friends or family offline, they get it in their heads that their email address is yours. Maybe it's because they used to have a similar ID at a different domain, I don't know. But it happens.

I have had to retrain two separate people that, no, their family members cannot be reached at [e-mail] (or [e-mail]) because its been mine (basically) since Gmail began so they must be mistaken. "But, no" they respond "that's the email they wrote down for me" -- as if I am lying about not being their relative or something. Eventually, they respond back with an apology or I never hear from them again. Until the next time it happens with someone else. (Because I have been contacted for Mike McNamara's in four different countries (all of whom who seem to have lives infinitely more interesting than mine), I'm assuming it's not the same guy.) For some reason, I find this to be an incredibly amusing game -- thank God.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:03 PM on January 18, 2012 [6 favorites]

Best answer: They will not be able to access the game site without my authorization.

It is possible the web site didn't properly explain that verification was required to play. Or the user overlooked this fact. Or alternatively the user was hoping that the web site was bluffing (some do) and would allow play after entering any ol' email address.
posted by JamesD at 1:03 PM on January 18, 2012

My brother Cameron mis-types his own e-mail address daily, resisting even the most valiant attempts of autofill to prevent it.

Or, what JamesD said.
posted by Kakkerlak at 1:08 PM on January 18, 2012

It could be that someone with a gmail address of [e-mail] created a new account. In GoogleWorld, [e-mail] is the same as [e-mail]. It defaults to the non-dot address.

For the life of me, I don't know why, then, Google allows people to use the bloody dot in the first place.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:10 PM on January 18, 2012

For the life of me, I don't know why, then, Google allows people to use the bloody dot in the first place.

We just did this in another thread, but "[e-mail]" and "[e-mail]" are exactly the same to google. If one was registered, the other could not be.
posted by inigo2 at 1:36 PM on January 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Some sites pay third parties for leads. Your address may have been submitted by one of their "affiliates" without your knowledge. They may have grabbed your email with one of their harvesting methods, e.g. fake ads on CL, or else just made it up.
posted by w.fugawe at 1:53 PM on January 18, 2012

I use made-up email addresses for many sign-ups. It never occurred to me until right now that of course some of them are probably real people's addresses. I generally assume that the company only wants your email address for nefarious purposes and that most of the time they won't actually require you to verify it. 90% of the time, I am right. The other 10% of the time, I re-sign up using my own email address once I realise they sent an email to the fake one.
posted by lollusc at 3:04 PM on January 18, 2012

Yep, it's a typo or someone who forgets their own email. I get these occasionally because someone who also uses 'andraste' as a moniker keeps forgetting that she doesn't own andraste at gmail when she signs up for things. She's also accidentally sent me documents containing personal details (!) which she was trying to send from a previous email address to her gmail.

In a weird twist, this other andraste and I share some interests. Some of the game-related stuff and fandom-related signups are things I am actually interested in (like Steam) and once or twice I've ended up using the accounts. Since she wouldn't have been able to confirm the account anyway, and since it means I can't sign up myself because it tells me "Your email has already been used for an account", I consider this justified.
posted by andraste at 3:42 PM on January 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Never, ever, ever underestimate the stupidity of the random internet user. I've had a particular username since early 1992, and I've had to start proactively creating accounts with it, because there is at least one person out there who is convinced it belongs to her. She's signed up for things using SMPAsancientusername at Juno, Netzero, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN AND Gmail - in some cases a full decade after I registered the freaking username at that particular domain. I assume she owns it somewhere by now and just can't keep her domain names straight. I've had this username at Yahoo locked up for something like 15 years - maybe more - and she still signs up for things using it. Tragically, I never log in there anymore, so no one knows that it's happened. It feels like living in one of those "if a tree falls in the forest" kind of riddles, really.

This is a reasonably obscure username, too - I've always assumed if I had a user ID like "JSmith" there'd be hundreds of people doing this all the time.

(Note: I decided to sign up for all those accounts in my highly sensitive and anxious teenage years. Don't bother doing this; it doesn't really solve anything, and you'll accidentally use one of the weird ones as a password recovery address, and end up navigating a chain of password recovery actions till you get back to an address you can actually remember the password to. On the other hand, thank you Friendster for forcing me to finally get all the passwords on all my ancient accounts reset and written down!)
posted by SMPA at 4:25 PM on January 18, 2012

There is at least one child in the United Kingdom spamming me daily in just this manner. My guess is that she or her guardian share my name, and she thought she'd "invent" a Gmail account to use so she wouldn't have to get mom's permission to play.

I've tried writing the game companies in question to block use of the address, but they couldn't care less, of course, and the kid just signs up again the next day if they remove the account.

If it keeps happening, go ahead and set up a filter for the phrase "Your child." It will save you some time.
posted by OompaLoompa at 4:41 PM on January 18, 2012

Some idiot that I assume has the same name as me constantly uses my gmail address to sign up for all kinds of random things. As payback, if it's something important, I'll do an email password reset, and then lock them out of the account. They also used my email address to order Domino's pizza once. I had fun with that one. :)
posted by BryanPayne at 4:49 PM on January 18, 2012

Nthing the typo, or mistaken identity. I think it must be a common problem amongst gmail early-adopters who managed to nab a [e-mail], or common word/phrase address.

There's some guy in the UK (I'm in the US.), who constantly signs up for things with [e-mail], which, with google mail, is apparently the same as [e-mail].

It's annoying. I've even replied to mistaken emails requesting the sender to tell him to quit giving out my email address. It has yet to work, and I still get his Orange cellular telephone bills, various other marketing emails, and he just recently signed up for Badoo, which AFAICT, is some sort of hookup site? At one point, some time ago, I received naked pictures of a rather unattractive middle-aged woman. Dude apparently gets around, and the temptation to engage in some sort of prank is great.

Coincidentally, just today someone else signed up for a twitter account using [e-mail], and I don't even have that common of a name. This time it's a teenage, christian-school-student, who just looooooves the jebus. I'm a curmudgeonly, 30-something, atheist/skeptic. Again, the temptation for shenanigans is great.
posted by zen_spider at 5:37 PM on January 18, 2012

People send errant messages to my gmail account all the time.
posted by germdisco at 9:36 PM on January 18, 2012

Scan the misdirected emails to see if there's a postal address, and write to them. A physical letter is sometimes the kick in the mental pants that people need to check they're typing their email right.

A lot of people get their own email address wrong, particularly if they don't use it a lot. Some people are just idiots. I've twice been in contact with a couple at the other end of the country, where the wife/girlfriend uses her husband/boyfriend's email address for online things, only she's actually using my email address instead. So I get her credit reports, payment receipts for gambling sites, online ordering delivery notes, and so on.

The kicker is that I now know his actual email address and it's nothing like mine.

[e-mail] is a privilege, not a right.
posted by Hogshead at 4:08 AM on January 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

I've got someone who has been giving out my e-mail address for years, almost as long as I have had it. I've gotten e-mails from her mother, from her son's teachers, from doctors. Recently, it seems under control from that direction, but she's started using my e-mail as a spam trap address. (I've given up on being removed from the Salvation Army Chicago mailing list, for example.)

I recently got a UPS shipping notice with her actual address on it. I've been debating sending her a letter asking her to knock it off ever since.
posted by atholbrose at 7:58 AM on January 19, 2012 [1 favorite]