Identity issues

[amanda_lodden]

I've talked before about how I am not the only person with my name. I am also not the only person using my email address. I'm the only person who is SUPPOSED to be using my email address, but some fucker really likes to use my email as a throwaway address. I get emails from Redbox all the time, and I have *never* used their service. The fact that they collect email addresses without any sort of verification irritates me to the point that I flat-out refuse to use their service.

I'm starting on a picture project, and to that end I went to Walgreen's website to get some pictures printed up. I've never used their website before, so I was pretty surprised when my registration failed because my email address is already in use. A quick click on the "retrieve your password" link got me in, at which point Walgreen's happily greeted me with a big "Welcome Back, Annette!"

Annette? Sure enough, poking through the account details, there's a registered user. Since Annette claims to be male, I'm pretty sure it's fake information (which is why I am not announcing all the contact details and letting people go to town.) I was confused at first, until I created another account using one of my semi-throwaway email addresses (not throwaway because it belongs to me, I just never check it because I only use it for sites that shouldn't be contacting me anyway), and Walgreen's doesn't verify addresses either. (Some poking around while trying to find a photo-printing site that doesn't charge an arm and a leg leads me to believe that no one verifies email any more, dammit.)

There's been a post about identity rolling around in my head ever since Google started deleting Plus profiles that didn't have "real names" attached to them. My email is part of my identity. My name, not so much. In part, that's because my name is so common. It's also because society says that as a woman, my name is supposed to be changed at some point in my life. Amanda Lodden isn't my name, but there's still a large swath of people who think it *should* be. Part of why I kept my name when I got married is because it's part of me. My email address is also part of me. Yes, I've changed it over the years, but it's always torn me up to have to do so. Now, some other person (or persons) have taken over my beloved email address, and my choices are either change my address to something less easy to type into forms, or suck it up and accept that I will get spam (the Walgreen's email preferences were pretty much "turn everything on" because that's Walgreen's default, and why bother going to the effort of changing the preferences if it's not your email getting filled up?) and sometimes have to reset a "lost" password on a site I've never been to.

Comments

[sorcycat.livejournal.com]

I just tell google that these sorts of emails are spam, so if enough people do that about a domain they'll blacklist it until the domain gets their act together. Recently though, there is a person at umich whose email is one letter off from mine, with the same first and last name as my maiden name. I'm getting her mail and this is really, really irritating as some of it was from her employer, I think. Argh! Thankfully it's not a frequent occurrence yet.

It could be worse

[mike o'connor (from livejournal.com)]

I have a Gmail address that is even more common than your email address. In the past week, I've gotten misdirected emails from:

1) a gay lover of a guy named Matt -- many graphic emails, in fact. Someone has a jockstrap fetish. A *smelly* jockstrap fetish.
2) an email thread started by someone named Sheryl rallying the Christian Divas. Hoo boy.
3) someone asking me to choose wine as part of a London "Planet Of The Grapes" event
4) Wells Fargo, giving me Maureen's bank statement. She's $420 richer.
5) some likely relative of the intended recipient named Denise asking me to join Groupon.
6) numerous teachers progress reports for some kid from a school in Idaho. He's doing well in most subjects, but slipping in Spanish.
7) Irish attorneys with deep specifics about a land deal in Galway.

I've decided that I sorta like it because it sticks it to The Man (aka Google) as far as who I really am, and provides me occasional amusement because it's real misdirected stuff and not just spam (though I get some of that too). If the volume of misdirected email got much worse, though, I may reconsider.

The important question is...

[(Anonymous)]

...did they leave their credit card information in their account?

==ml

Re: The important question is...

[amanda_lodden.livejournal.com]

Alas, they did not.