North Philadelphia.... never born or raised there.... Except my Apple ID bought an Apple watch there ?

[cbelt3]

Weird Apple email last week saying I had bought an Apple watch at the Willow Grove Park store in North Philly. And it was a legit apple email ! With my Apple ID email address.. But not my credit card number, etc...

So I figured, OK, I'll call. And after dealing with Apple's call system from heck (I think I went through three separate countries) I finally got to a person who told me "Just call the police" and hung up. Hey.. no fraud happened here, someone just fat-fingered my email. In fact, I really suspect I know who it is... there's a "Carol" in Philly who keeps using that email address.

Hoo boy.

[testcase]

I still make a police report out. My agency would have labeled it as "Suspicious Circumstances" or possibly "Police Information" (unless they suspect a crime is being / has been committed). IF the use of your email is / was a simple mistake, there's no harm / no foul having a police report on file. IF however, something nefarious is happening (or will happen), a simple police report on file could CYA should circumstances go south. AT the very least, I'd expect police to run "Carol's" name (and very possibly the credit card#). You never know what might turn up. A heads up to the three main credit reporting services would be a prudent move as would notifying the credit card company. ALL of those last reports could be done in ONE email with copies to all (and yourself), expressing your concern that ID theft may be happening. An ounce of prevention....

[GGD]

cbelt3 wrote:
In fact, I really suspect I know who it is... there's a "Carol" in Philly who keeps using that email address.

There's someone in England that types in one of my apple email addresses frequently trying to sign up for twitter, and even for Amazon orders. He uses the @icloud.com version of it which I never use. And his first and last name concatenated are the email address that he uses, except the fact that it wasn't available and he had to pick something else doesn't seem to sink in.

[space-time]

someone in Romania with the same name like me opened a bank account and I keep getting emails to gmail about this back activities and offers. I email the bank, they remove it, and half a year later it happens again

Then a few months ago someone (maybe the same person?) signed up on a dating site in Romania and I kept getting emails to confirm my email and activate the account. The email kept coming at very precise intervals I think every 15 min or so for a few hours until they stopped. This was during Christmas break and we were home and my wife and I were amused how precise the emails arrived.

[rz]

Willow Grove is NOT North Philadelphia! It's a suburb that's north of Philadelphia. North Philadelphia is basically the worst part of town.

[August West]

I started getting emails from Australia to my gmail account. I just deleted them, but after a while became curious. I started reading and it was obvious after a bit that nothing nefarious was going on. It was kind of a community listserv, talking about school, church, small town life, etc. I even looked up the town.

The Australian person's email is John.h.smith, mine is john.h.smith. Just the capital letter difference. I wrote the group to let them know, and we joked about it, and I still occasionally get mail from them. Apparently I'm a regular at a nearby winery now.

ETA: I should add, I was getting mail from his email address, not a typo.

[space-time]

The Australian person's email is John.h.smith, mine is john.h.smith. Just the capital letter difference.

that should not matter with most email servers. Space.Time@gmail.com and space.time@gmail.com and SPACE.TIME@gmail.com and SpAcE.tImE@gmail.com should all go to the same inbox. IN fact even spacetime@gmail.com (no dot) goes to the same inbox.

No, it's not my real email. Please don't spam whoever has that email address.

[testcase]

"No, it's not my real email. Please don't spam whoever has that email address."



Awww C'mon. You don't want us ALL to send a friendly "Hello"..... 8-)

[August West]

You're right that it should not matter with most servers, but it can matter with some if they are configured as such. Somehow this individual and I share the same email with most servers, but not all.

[NewtonMP2100]

....chances are it was just a typo with the email or Apple ID but one never knows....