So here's the deal:
Tonight I went onto Yahoo to fill out my yearly NCAA March Madness bracket.
The Yahoo account I use is essentially a throw away - I think I created it over a decade ago, I don't use it for "real" emailing, I just use it for Yahoo Fantasy Sports stuff like various Fantasy Teams and March Madness.
My usual password worked like normal.
So I log in, fill out my bracket, and notice the top bar of the Yahoo page says I have new emails. So I decide to click through to see what is sitting in my inbox - I'm guessing it's all junk and spam or maybe some old fantasy sports stuff I ignored.
Instead there are several things from Amazon about purchases. I immediately get very confused. My Amazon account is under a different email address, I don't have a secondary Amazon account, so what is going on? Has my information somehow been compromised?
I look through the emails. It was all old junk from 2011 until the new ones began December 25th after a Kindle was activated and all of the purchases emails are for "digital" items - namely Android apps. The "purchases" are all free apps, except for one that was 99 cents. There's a free month of Amazon Prime activated too (I assume auto-activated with the Kindle?). The last activity was mid-February.
At this point I'm still confused - has my security somehow been breached? I notice none of the emails have been read - it's like the person input this email address for my Yahoo account on their Kindle device despite not actually having access to the email account.
I immediately change my Yahoo email password, just in case.
I pull up Amazon and try to log in with my Yahoo email address and the old password from that account. Denied. I click to reset the password. I get into the account and check to see if one of my credit cards has been compromised - I too have a Kindle so I would have brushed off something like a 99 cent app purchase appearing a credit card statement. Thankfully the credit card on file isn't mine and belongs to someone else across the country. There aren't any other orders on the account.
The best I can piece together is that this person - when faced with having to create an Amazon account for their new Kindle which was a Christmas present - put in my Yahoo email address. My Yahoo account involves my very common first name - which apparently is his first name too - but the rest of it is rather silly and ridiculous (having been created probably 10+ years ago).
I tried to Google this person but he doesn't have a very unique surname and he lives in a fairly large city, so there are multiple people with his name that pop up. Many are 45+ years old so maybe this was just a confused older person?
Or did this person say "Screw it" and put in a "random" email address for their Amazon account not thinking it actually existed? Or does this person have my same email address but at a different domain, like AOL or Hotmail and messed up and used Yahoo when registering the Kindle?
And so here is my dilemma (hence the slidecage'd part of the title) - what do I do about this?
Do I contact Amazon and just explain this bizarre story? Do I contact them from within his account and ask them to close it (which I assume would brick his Kindle)?
I don't want Amazon to think I'm some kind of crook for accessing this account - the guy was using MY email address, albeit a throw away one, and I wanted to make sure my credit card information wasn't compromised. I'm afraid Amazon might overreact and ban me (and my family by association) if I contact them from my regular account, even though I don't believe I have done anything wrong.
The bottom line for me is - it's my email address, not his - so he doesn't get to use it for his Amazon account. It seems to be one big mistake so I'd hate to see someone's Kindle get bricked (especially if they're older and/or technologically confused) because of problems with the account, but at the same time, I'm not the one who put in the wrong email address. I just don't want to be associated with this all through my secondary email account.
Tonight I went onto Yahoo to fill out my yearly NCAA March Madness bracket.
The Yahoo account I use is essentially a throw away - I think I created it over a decade ago, I don't use it for "real" emailing, I just use it for Yahoo Fantasy Sports stuff like various Fantasy Teams and March Madness.
My usual password worked like normal.
So I log in, fill out my bracket, and notice the top bar of the Yahoo page says I have new emails. So I decide to click through to see what is sitting in my inbox - I'm guessing it's all junk and spam or maybe some old fantasy sports stuff I ignored.
Instead there are several things from Amazon about purchases. I immediately get very confused. My Amazon account is under a different email address, I don't have a secondary Amazon account, so what is going on? Has my information somehow been compromised?
I look through the emails. It was all old junk from 2011 until the new ones began December 25th after a Kindle was activated and all of the purchases emails are for "digital" items - namely Android apps. The "purchases" are all free apps, except for one that was 99 cents. There's a free month of Amazon Prime activated too (I assume auto-activated with the Kindle?). The last activity was mid-February.
At this point I'm still confused - has my security somehow been breached? I notice none of the emails have been read - it's like the person input this email address for my Yahoo account on their Kindle device despite not actually having access to the email account.
I immediately change my Yahoo email password, just in case.
I pull up Amazon and try to log in with my Yahoo email address and the old password from that account. Denied. I click to reset the password. I get into the account and check to see if one of my credit cards has been compromised - I too have a Kindle so I would have brushed off something like a 99 cent app purchase appearing a credit card statement. Thankfully the credit card on file isn't mine and belongs to someone else across the country. There aren't any other orders on the account.
The best I can piece together is that this person - when faced with having to create an Amazon account for their new Kindle which was a Christmas present - put in my Yahoo email address. My Yahoo account involves my very common first name - which apparently is his first name too - but the rest of it is rather silly and ridiculous (having been created probably 10+ years ago).
I tried to Google this person but he doesn't have a very unique surname and he lives in a fairly large city, so there are multiple people with his name that pop up. Many are 45+ years old so maybe this was just a confused older person?
Or did this person say "Screw it" and put in a "random" email address for their Amazon account not thinking it actually existed? Or does this person have my same email address but at a different domain, like AOL or Hotmail and messed up and used Yahoo when registering the Kindle?
And so here is my dilemma (hence the slidecage'd part of the title) - what do I do about this?
Do I contact Amazon and just explain this bizarre story? Do I contact them from within his account and ask them to close it (which I assume would brick his Kindle)?
I don't want Amazon to think I'm some kind of crook for accessing this account - the guy was using MY email address, albeit a throw away one, and I wanted to make sure my credit card information wasn't compromised. I'm afraid Amazon might overreact and ban me (and my family by association) if I contact them from my regular account, even though I don't believe I have done anything wrong.
The bottom line for me is - it's my email address, not his - so he doesn't get to use it for his Amazon account. It seems to be one big mistake so I'd hate to see someone's Kindle get bricked (especially if they're older and/or technologically confused) because of problems with the account, but at the same time, I'm not the one who put in the wrong email address. I just don't want to be associated with this all through my secondary email account.
