Someone stole my email account for Facebook

[little_dreamer]

I am really angy about this for some reason. Still seeing red right now.

I have 2 primary email accounts that I use for most things. When I checked my email this morning, I found someone used my email to register for Facebook. Just by chance, this is not the email I use for my online banking.

The email was Facebook notifying me that a friend posted something. So I clicked the link in the email, and now I am in the thief's Facebook account! Naturally I had the password reset and kicked her out. I already notified Facebook support as to what happened.

I do not know this person at all, but she has a similar name to me. I was going to post something nasty on the page, calling her a thief and criminal, but I'm keeping my cool for now. It could be an honest but stupid mistake on her part.

The thing is, I have been getting notifications from a few other websites that I never registered for. I kept hitting "Unsubscribe" but never was able to figure out who was behind this. There may be other people using this account as well.

Has this happened to anyone else, and what are my (legal) options?

[seeder]

I am really angy about this for some reason. Still seeing red right now.

I have 2 primary email accounts that I use for most things. When I checked my email this morning, I found someone used my email to register for Facebook. Just by chance, this is not the email I use for my online banking.

The email was Facebook notifying me that a friend posted something. So I clicked the link in the email, and now I am in the thief's Facebook account! Naturally I had the password reset and kicked her out. I already notified Facebook support as to what happened.

I do not know this person at all, but she has a similar name to me. I was going to post something nasty on the page, calling her a thief and criminal, but I'm keeping my cool for now. It could be an honest but stupid mistake on her part.

The thing is, I have been getting notifications from a few other websites that I never registered for. I kept hitting "Unsubscribe" but never was able to figure out who was behind this. There may be other people using this account as well.

Has this happened to anyone else, and what are my (legal) options?

Contact your email provider, as you have FB support. It sounds very weird, I think I would have kept the account open and found out more about the person, like an address or tel number. I dont know how its done, but similar happened to my twitter account. I didnt use it for a few weeks and when I came back to it, someone had been using it to send tweets and I had acquired about 250 followers that I didnt know... I closed the account down sharpish

[little_dreamer]

I am sitting in the Facebook account right now. I also found a friend of this person who was also using my email account. I don't have access to that person's account, so I sent them a facebook message stating " Stop using email *****.*** or I will contact the police, using the thief's facebook account.

Trust me, I am archiving stuff so I know as much about them as possible.

This has been going on for months with other stupid websites - so I finally have information at last!

Edited July 31, 2014 by little_dreamer

[freetoroam]

I am really angy about this for some reason. Still seeing red right now.

I have 2 primary email accounts that I use for most things. When I checked my email this morning, I found someone used my email to register for Facebook. Just by chance, this is not the email I use for my online banking.

The email was Facebook notifying me that a friend posted something. So I clicked the link in the email, and now I am in the thief's Facebook account! Naturally I had the password reset and kicked her out. I already notified Facebook support as to what happened.

I do not know this person at all, but she has a similar name to me. I was going to post something nasty on the page, calling her a thief and criminal, but I'm keeping my cool for now. It could be an honest but stupid mistake on her part.

The thing is, I have been getting notifications from a few other websites that I never registered for. I kept hitting "Unsubscribe" but never was able to figure out who was behind this. There may be other people using this account as well.

Has this happened to anyone else, and what are my (legal) options?

I do not do facebook, but my email needs a password too, (like all do) not sure, but it is possible clicking on the link did you. This is how they get your details.

I get emails from paypal telling me to click on link as there has been some unusual activity on my account ..NEVER click on the link, go into you account when you have logged out of your emails.

[seeder]

I am sitting in the Facebook account right now. I also found a friend of this person who was also using my email account. I don't have access to that person's account, so I sent them a facebook message stating " Stop using email *****.*** or I will contact the police, using the thief's facebook account.

Trust me, I am archiving stuff so I know as much about them as possible.

This has been going on for months with other stupid websites - so I finally have information at last!

I dont know how you are archiving, but assume you are taking screen shots and saving them? It may be a good idea to chat with the police anyway, you never know, they could be proper fraudsters. It only takes one call to them to see if they are interested..

[Kenemet]

Facebook fakery is fairly common. Your email was probably harvested from something (and not directly something you did) -- it was hacked from someone's email list.

Do change your passwords. Don't bother getting into a brawl with the sniper, but if the Facebook account has been started by someone using your name, just take over that account. You don't have to use it, but you can take control of it.

[little_dreamer]

I do not do facebook, but my email needs a password too, (like all do) not sure, but it is possible clicking on the link did you. This is how they get your details. I get emails from paypal telling me to click on link as there has been some unusual activity on my account ..NEVER click on the link, go into you account when you have logged out of your emails.

Normally I never click on email links. But in this case I could not resist the urge to catch them. It paid off in this case but it was risky. I will change my email password.

The problem is that too many websites will allow you to register an email account without confirming that it belongs to you.

I dont know how you are archiving, but assume you are taking screen shots and saving them? It may be a good idea to chat with the police anyway, you never know, they could be proper fraudsters. It only takes one call to them to see if they are interested..

I'm coping content into Microsoft Word documents. Also saved some screen shots with MS Paint.

Edited July 31, 2014 by little_dreamer

[freetoroam]

Normally I never click on email links. But in this case I could not resist the urge to catch them. It paid off in this case but it was risky. I will change my email password.

The problem is that too many websites will allow you to register an email account without confirming that it belongs to you.

Its the password they are after, you can give your email to anyone in order to receive them, they get the password when you click on the link.

I have no problem giving out an email account, I have numerous, all for different reasons, but the main one for banking is only ever used for banking and no one gets that.

Remember emails are similar to phone calls, if you did not request emails from certain people, do not open it. And most legit companies will not ask you to click on a link, (unless you have requested a link to verify something) they will ask you to just log into your account...without going through email.

You may find there is a couple of letters or numbers different in the email address from the scammers, so without looking close enough, it looks legit..check everything.

[little_dreamer]

She has only had this account for 1 day and she already has 40 friends. I am soooooooo tempted to log in as her and post something like "I am an identity thief and a ******* as well".

But I will be good for now.

[seeder]

She has only had this account for 1 day and she already has 40 friends. I am soooooooo tempted to log in as her and post something like "I am an identity thief and a ******* as well".

But I will be good for now.

make a post saying - "I just got my gyno' results back, and Its confirmed as syphillis"

[Orcseeker]

Have they truly stolen your email or just typed in a random email which happened to be yours?

[little_dreamer]

Have they truly stolen your email or just typed in a random email which happened to be yours?

That's still unclear at this point. I don't think the girl and her friend are very smart. They used what appears to be their full names, birth dates and full street addresses on their Facebook accounts. They left themselves wide open for identity theft. So this is why I'm keeping it cool for now.

I was just annoyed because they were signing up for stupid Twilight fan fiction type websites, and I was getting all their emails the past few months.

Edited July 31, 2014 by little_dreamer

[Duke Wellington]

I am really angy about this for some reason. Still seeing red right now.

I have 2 primary email accounts that I use for most things. When I checked my email this morning, I found someone used my email to register for Facebook. Just by chance, this is not the email I use for my online banking.

The email was Facebook notifying me that a friend posted something. So I clicked the link in the email, and now I am in the thief's Facebook account! Naturally I had the password reset and kicked her out. I already notified Facebook support as to what happened.

I do not know this person at all, but she has a similar name to me. I was going to post something nasty on the page, calling her a thief and criminal, but I'm keeping my cool for now. It could be an honest but stupid mistake on her part.

The thing is, I have been getting notifications from a few other websites that I never registered for. I kept hitting "Unsubscribe" but never was able to figure out who was behind this. There may be other people using this account as well.

Has this happened to anyone else, and what are my (legal) options?

Dont jump to conclusions, there might be something strange going on with the email accounts. Maybe a glitch has occured somewhere allowing for duplicate named emails.

[shrooma]

boy, am i soooo glad my life is uncomplicated....

[little_dreamer]

boy, am i soooo glad my life is uncomplicated....

First world problems, I know.

make a post saying - "I just got my gyno' results back, and Its confirmed as syphillis"

If I do, she will probably lose half of her friends right then. Maybe if she keeps stealing my email account I will do it.

[dryrain]

Do people still use facebook much these days?

[DefenceMinisterMishkin]

Do people still use facebook much these days?

This

[Orcseeker]

Do people still use facebook much these days?

I use it as a communication medium via the messaging service. Haven't posted a status or uploaded pictures in a while.

[BiffSplitkins]

So then the user must have had 100% access to your email account as well. If I am correct, when you sign up for Facebook they send a message to your email account and require you to click on a link from within that message to activate the Facebook account that you are creating.

Change all of your passwords to every online account you have, and your security questions because if that person had access to your email account, then they can quite easily hack all of your other accounts.

When I say "Change your passwords" I don't mean change them from 'mydogsname' to 'mycatsname'. I mean really change them. Use capitol letters and symbols and make them as complex as you can stand it.

Change any security questions and answers to your other stuff as well. If that person had access to your email for a while then that gave them plenty of time to browse through any archived messages for any other accounts you may have. Log into each one of your online accounts and verify that the email address on the account is actually your email address.

[frenat]

Sounds similar to something that happened to me years ago. I logged into a very seldom used Yahoo account and found an email that I had a friend request on Myspace. I had never used myspace and rarely used that email. Turns out that the kid that signed up for myspace used my email address (thinking he was making one up) and myspace didn't at the time send a confirmation email to make sure the email address was real. He didn't have access to my Yahoo account but because of the email address he used I had access to his myspace account. I changed his password and closed his account.

[little_dreamer]

I changed the password for this email account to something totally different the day that it originally happened.

She tried to reset the Facebook password about a week after I took over the account. But Facebook did not allow her to change the password I had set earlier. When I logged into Facebook, this is the message I receive:

"In order to keep your information secure, we've locked your account. Before we can unlock it, please verify your identity and change your password.

Your account will remain hidden until you complete this process."

Since I asked Facebook to de-activate the account for this email address, this seems to have fixed the problem. I didn't want to have a Facebook account for this email address anyway.

So I guess the problem kind of fixed itself for now. I will still monitor this email account more closely in the future.

[Deleted]

wtf.

i had a hotmail account, which microsoft closed without a reason and I cant acess it anymore, there were alot of important emails stored. And microsoft support is ignoring me.

Edited September 10, 2014 by hellwyr