I was able to find a contact number for Best Buy (which is getting harder and harder to do these days) and after being on hold for 10 minutes, I explained the situation to the Best Buy agent and asked if he was aware of any scam or reason my e-mail address would be given for a purchase. He just kept telling me in a heavy accent to check my credit card account and I gave up trying to explain that I didn't own the card that was used.
Went back to my e-mail account and that's when the weirdness really began. In the course of one hour, I received over 200 e-mails in my inbox from a variety of businesses, welcoming me or asking me to confirm my email address for their newsletter. My spam folder had even more. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it, and because the majority of it seemed legitimate (sites like Old Cars Weekly, Sheet Music Plus, New York Times) it landed in my inbox. Maybe 5% were in Spanish or German. I am still receiving about 20 per day, but I think because I keep marking everything as spam, Google/Gmail has been intercepting most of it as spam now.
I have to believe the two events are related, since it happened within the same hour. I tried googling it, but couldn't find anything that matched my experience. What game would someone be playing by signing me up for hundreds of newsletters and using my e-mail when ordering one item? I would enjoy hearing your thoughts or similar experiences.
I've probably blocked a good 10,000 email addresses. I've never gotten any that talked about a purchase but I get a bunch that seem legit and it all started at once.
ReplyDeleteMost likely it is that the email got on a radar and packaged with a bunch of others and then sold off to anyone looking to buy. You see ads like "Buy 1000 emails for your newsletter."
And legit companies don't do it, scammers buy them with emails that look almost legit. Click a link and they got all your info when you sign up.
So yeah, grabbed and sold or added to some scammer's automatic email sender.
It does seem like my email address was sold, yet many of the newsletters and websites emailing me are legit American businesses. It's very odd.
DeleteWOW...that IS a scare! I was so relieved to read (as I know you were) that it was your email used to make the purchase and NOT you credit card. However, that's still scary. I've never had anything like that happen to me, but I have had my Gmail account (CONTACTS) hacked. I started receiving emails from various people I know. In fact, I got a lot of SPAM emails from many of the people who I blog with that were sending very strange requests in the SUBJECT box. But when I emailed them back to see if the HAD sent me these emails, they said no but, they noticed over the past several days that their email had been hacked. I find that Google GMAIL is really great at filtering SPAM, but I also find that it's easily hacked.
ReplyDelete" I received over 200 e-mails in my inbox"
OMG...that's A LOT of emails!
I have had issues in the past where people I'm friends with on Facebook got hacked and then I was getting creepy spam in the gmail account I have associated with Facebook. I don't like the way it's all interconnected and I've tried to put privacy settings on high for every website I use. It can be frustrating to keep up with all of it.
DeleteI have no idea, but I am always wary of the "check here to not receive email notices" Clicking on that just might get you hacked.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right and I'm going to be on extra alert now.
DeleteThat's annoying, and more annoying still that customer "service" was not that at all.
ReplyDeleteThat hasn't happened to me, but my husband gets waaaay more spam emails than I do. I'm pretty aggressive about unsubscribing from things. I do think once some one gets your email through hacking or phishing or whatever, it gets spewed out into the universe with lightning speed. Marking it all as spam is probably your best best.
Just a thought - the purchase might have been fake and a way to get you engaged in the process somehow.
Lightning speed is right! When I called Best Buy, they did confirm the purchase with the order number on the email. So weird.
DeleteThe question is, did you use a link in the original e-mail to 'cancel' the original order or did you go to BestBuy.com directly and do it from there? If you clicked on a link in the e-mail it may not have even gone to best buy but rather to a spoof website that then triggered the rest. I've seen this before and helped others figure out whether they were exposed by it. If that is what happened, they were likely hoping you'd enter some of your personal details at one of the spoof sites that they could then use or sell. I assume you didn't enter any credit card info at any of the sites? If not, just keep marking everything as SPAM and eventually it may clear itself up (or at least hide it in your SPAM folder).
ReplyDeleteWhat you're saying does make sense in that I got the majority of the emails after the Best Buy order confirmation, but there were a few in my inbox before the Best Buy one.
DeleteI did click the cancel link in the email, which maybe was dumb on my part. No info was asked and it showed that the order was canceled and then I immediately got a cancel email from Best Buy. I went directly to their website for a phone number. I gave the agent the order number and he looked it up and it was all legit. He also saw that it had been canceled. So, the order was real, no doubt about it.
If I hadn't received all the spam, I would think that Susan accidentally mistyped her own email address by one letter.
I agree with another commenter about clicking the link in the email and landing on a spoof site. It's weird though that they used your email and not your credit card. I wonder what they hoped to get out of this? I have only received some spoof emails telling me I need to update my account info and click the link they sent. I never click links in emails. I always go right to the website and see if it's there.
ReplyDeleteI can't figure it out. I googled Susan Sabino in Oswego and it's a 67 year old woman. So, she is real. Just weird!
DeleteI can't imagine what the purpose of that might be, other than to annoy you and flood your In Box. Glad your card wasn't charged, though!
ReplyDeleteGmail has finally caught up and I'm not getting any of it in my inbox anymore. But I counted 40 in the spam box, just from today. Good grief.
DeleteGosh, Bijoux, I'm so sorry to hear about this! I had my identity hacked so I know what it's like to get those strange emails. I hope you get this sorted out as soon as possible.
ReplyDeleteI think all is ok, but when something like this happens, it pays to be vigilant.
DeleteAll very mysterious. Thankfully I've never had an experience like that. Hopefully you're on top of it and the rogue emails will soon stop.
ReplyDeleteA few more landed in my inbox today. Instead of my email, it was addressed to: 5bec6yzx and much more gobbledegook. Much weirdness.
DeleteCertainly weird and I've had no experience with it. Got to be frustrating dealing with it all. I did notice over the last few weeks that I've gotten more advertisements coming through as regular mail and not going into spam, even though I have my spam settings set really high on what is spam and what is not, but that has kind of quieted down over the past 2 days. Hope it resolves itself soon and if you ever find out how it happened in the first place, please let us know!
ReplyDeletebetty
At least it's going to my spam folder now!
DeleteThat's really weird, but at least it wasn't your credit card. Maybe it's some kind of thing where someone puts in random email addresses in hopes of getting some kind of referral bonus? Or someone has an email address very similar to yours? That's all I can think of.
ReplyDeleteYup, I've had credit cards compromised so many times already. Such a hassle!
DeleteDefinitely a scam, and you probably triggered the flood of emails by clicking on the link. I remember reading that you should never "unsubscribe" from spam (only from legitimate emails, like from stores, stuff you had signed up for at one time). If you click on "unsubscribe" it will only validate your email address as a real email address (and then sells for a higher price).
ReplyDeleteI get periodic phishing emails from companies that pretend to be Apple. "Confirming your purchase of XYZ from a computer in Zaire (or some unusual country like that)...if you want to cancel this order or if you did not make this purchase, click on this link..." It looks just like an email from Apple, but little things give it away - misspellings, wrong grammar, they don't know my real name, etc. Very annoying.
The Best Buy email was legit, since when I called, they had both the order number I gave them from the email, and the cancelation when I clicked to cancel the order. That's what's so strange about it all.
Delete