Recently I’ve encountered a dilemma, one which actually happened to me before and forced me to use Twitter. Someone has registered themselves under an online service and used one of my email addresses.
This first happened to me with Twitter several years ago, when someone created an account (ironically using the same email) using my address to create a Twitter handle. Being much younger, and feeling a sense of making what’s mine – well … mine, I used that email to hijack the account. Because it’s my email, I had access to reset the password and confirm it. I changed the handle, the theme, everything and made it mine. Was it the correct thing to do? That’s something I’d like to think is debatable.
Sadly, it seems I’ve had a new person, a Laura, who has signed up on Netflix using my email address. She’s linked her credit card details there and everything. When it comes to that level of personal details – I simply can’t hijack it. I have no means to contact her either, since I don’t have a last name and I’m the email holder. It’s for this reason I always perfer a system which asks for a confirmation email link to be clicked BEFORE allowing highly personal details like credit cards.
What would you do?
