
My wife found my email in the Ashley Madison database - antr
https://evan.atavist.com/my-wife-found-my-email-in-the-ashley-madison-database
======
ggchappell
Okay, time for my story:

About two decades ago, while going through new-employee orientation at a
university, I sent some e-mail from a computer lab. As part of this, I entered
my e-mail address as the reply-to address. At that moment, there was some kind
of misconfiguration: the directory on the university-wide server where global
defaults were stored happened to be writeable.

A couple of weeks later, when all the students showed up, my e-mail address
was the default reply-to address on the standard e-mail client in all
university computer labs. And because the configuration problem had been fixed
-- the directory was no longer writeable -- my address _remained_ the default
address.

It took me a while to figure out what had happened. For several days, all I
knew was that suddenly I was subscribed to every mailing list in the universe.

When I did figure it out, I told the IT people, and they fixed it. But then --
_I 'm not making this up!_ \-- there was some kind of crash, they had to
restore from a backup, and it happened all over again.

There was no serious negative impact from this episode; I just got tons of
wacky e-mails for a while. Perhaps things might be different if something
similar were to happen today.

~~~
chrisgd
Would you receive replies from emails users sent from their own address?

User a emails his mom, his mom hits reply and it was directed to your account?

~~~
ggchappell
Yes, that was eventually the big tip-off as to what had happened. I would get
messages like, "Hi, Fred! Glad to see you're settled in at BigU. Who's this
'ggchappell' guy?" (My name isn't "Fred", BTW.)

------
sinatra
I actually thought about something slightly related -- With the AM drama,
won't an individual have a reason to signup to all shady websites with their
worst enemey's email address and then wait for one of those sites to get
similarly hacked? Would some people have created AM profiles of others just as
a joke, and now those people might be in trouble?

I once found a dating profile of mine that was created by an overzealous
relative. Thankfully this was few years before I met my spouse.

~~~
mhurron
> won't an individual have a reason to signup to all shady websites with their
> worst enemey's email address

Well usually sites verify that the person signing up on a site is the owner of
that address, in a large part for this very reason.

~~~
sinatra
I've heard that AM didn't verify. And I'd say many shady websites won't.

~~~
vitoreiji
That's a cheap form of plausible deniability, then.

------
orionblastar
My Gmail is based on my real name and I had similar problems:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9502169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9502169)

At least 300 men in the USA share the same name as me. I got my Gmail in 2005
so I got it firstname.lastname@gmail.com and others who got the same name as
me enter it into websites all of the time. Most don't even validate the email,
and sometimes I have to email the admins to get the account shut down.

I think websites have a resposibility to validate the email and delete the
account if it isn't validate in a reasonable amount of time or have a link to
delete the account if someone who signed up wasn't you.

~~~
aikah
> I think websites have a responsibility to validate the email and delete the
> account if it isn't validate in a reasonable amount of time or have a link
> to delete the account if someone who signed up wasn't you.

You're talking about a business with questionable practices to begin with in
that case, not a responsible one. These people are scammers like most of the
dating websites.

~~~
orionblastar
Obviously the only thing they cared about was money. Offered to delete the
account for $19 but just hid it instead of deleting it.

------
sbov
Imagine the spam you would get if you have a common name - like
jsmith@gmail.com.

I have a boss with a very common last name - not quite as common as smith
though. He has a "jsmith@yahoo.com" email address. He _constantly_ gets emails
meant for other j smiths.

~~~
nsxwolf
I'm stunned I'm not in the AM database. Variations of my gmail address (dots
in different places) have been used to sign up for every sketchy "adult
dating" site in the world. My wife saw some in my inbox and was very upset,
until I showed her the massive amount of things I get that are quite obviously
intended for someone else with my name.

~~~
MatthaeusHarris
Gmail ignores the dots internally. j.smith@gmail.com is the same as
js.mith@gmail.com is the same as jsmith@gmail.com.

------
jakejake
I wonder if a lot of addresses were added by AM themselves, perhaps from an
email marketing list. I have a spam-catcher account where all messages go
straight to the junk folder. I use it when required to sign into services that
I don't ever plan to return. I found this email on the AM list, though I
haven't ever signed up. It's likely that my address was sold by some service
or another, is all I can figure?

~~~
richmarr
Have you been sleeping like a baby recently, but occasionally waking up and
Helena Bonham Carter is in your house?

~~~
hellbanner
What does this mean?

~~~
nsxwolf
Reference to the movie Fight Club, which you should now go watch.

------
larrys
I think many people are missing perhaps the real issue with appearing on a
list like this (even if wrongly accused so to speak). By appearing on the list
you raise suspicions and those suspicions could very well cause someone
(spouse, girlfriend) to look at what you do more closely. That may or may not
matter. It may have to be combined with other solid or sketchy data. This is
similar to how police solve some crimes. Some little fact, while insignificant
in itself, gets them to focus more closely on a particular individual that
they might not have thought much about prior to the insignificant and even
incorrect fact that was passed to them. Such as "well I did see a Red Chevy
Camaro with Florida plates" or "a guy wearing a University of Michigan
sweatshirt"...

------
volune
Who cares about email addresses? Credit card numbers are how you incriminate
your cheating spouse.

~~~
briantmaurer
Credit card numbers are often stolen and therefore are not a good singular
piece of evidence.

~~~
legohead
Don't know why you got downvoted. My CC was recently compromised, and the
"thief" purchased a lot of very odd things all at once which triggered the
flag, including online services I had never heard of. And lots of dominos
pizza!

------
3JPLW
Similar first-initial-last-name gmail address, similar issues. Fortunately my
email didn't make into AM, but I checked as soon as I found out because I get
so many wrong emails, and wanted to know myself before anyone else looked "me"
up.

The worst is Sprint: my email address is attached to a family account in
Minnesota… and every time the parents use the "locate your child" feature it,
as a security measure to be sure, sends an email alerting them that their
child had been located near 123 Main St, SomeTown, MN. That one freaked me out
enough to try to resolve it… I called Sprint, went through three reps and it
took 20 minutes just to get them to understand the issue. And even then,
neither that rep nor their supervisor could do a thing about it. So now I have
a gmail filter that insta-trashes those messages… I really don't want to know
where those children are!

------
ctz
I have the same problem, having an jbloggs@gmail.com-format address.

It seems there's one lady who apparently lives in Utah and is unable to
accurately tell anybody her email address. I've received several sets of
flight bookings / e-tickets, personal photos, schedules for religious
retreats, etc.

------
toyg
I have the same problem. I receive flight tickets, dinner reservations, once
even an entire stack of private documents including passport scans (from
someone working as an admin for the Italian PM! Blackmail opportunities
ahoy...). I usually do my best to track down "offenders" and forward their
stuff... unless it's something from racist/wingnut organisations (it looks
like Americans sharing my surname have right-wing sympathies).

I originally thought it was a "senior citizen" issue but now it happens with
all sorts. People just forget what their correct email address is. Moral of
the story: registering your name to new services asap is always good ;)

~~~
fencepost
I get the same and have sometimes tracked down the people involved for things
that seemed important (e.g . medical continuing education course proof).

I do gleefully mark as spam the ongoing stuff from a rather wingnutty gun
rights organization that someone donated to, though I did attempt to
unsubscribe first. Apparently once you give some groups money there's just no
getting off their lists.

------
ajg360
Something similar happened to me last week. I started getting e-mails from
eBay to first.last@me.com, an e-mail address that I use for iCloud, but
nothing else. I was getting inundated with messages from eBay, so this
morning, I did exactly what the guy in the article did; I reset the password,
and took control of the account. Hopefully, problem solved (aside from some
residual messages I'm still receiving).

Also, it turns out that I get collections calls for a guy with my first and
last name, and based on the information in the eBay account, I have reason to
believe this is him. Guess where I'm pointing the next debt collectors to call
me to?

------
uptown
I'm on the receiving end of some family's group emails. It seems like they've
had some nice vacations over the past few years. I hope they found the lost
sneaker they misplaced this Summer. I contemplated showing up at their (our?)
family reunion but I wasn't able to make it that weekend.

------
kafkaesque
I've successfully created a few emails written in leetspeak or using short
3-number keys or 3-letter abbreviations converted to some type of base X
system and never have problems with them. I rarely, if ever, receive junk
mail, and humans definitely have a lesser chance of using them.

------
Macsenour
My phone number used to be 222-3212 and every day when I got home from work I
had a filled phone answering machine, (yep that long ago). Mostly random kids,
but sometimes sales people.

------
highstep
This guy has two problems:

1) his wife doesn't trust him

2) his wife needs a lesson in spam avoidance, as she was foolish enough to
type her husband's email address into a website form that very likely is
scraping addresses to be sold to spammers.

------
justinhj
the article doesn't mention that you have to confirm your email is valid by
clicking a link before you get registered so incriminating strangers this way
should be impossible. I presume he validated the email himself

~~~
fjarlq
But that's widely reported as not being true. On what basis do you claim
otherwise?

> _It’s important to note that Ashley Madison’s sign-up process does not
> require verification of an email address to set up an account, so legitimate
> addresses might have been hijacked and used by some members of the site. One
> email in the data dump, for example, appears to belong to former UK Prime
> Minister (Tony Blair)._

\-- [http://www.wired.com/2015/08/happened-hackers-posted-
stolen-...](http://www.wired.com/2015/08/happened-hackers-posted-stolen-
ashley-madison-data/)

~~~
emp_zealoth
And why would that make it suspect? I'd rather assume it was him who signed up

------
RodericDay
> Mostly, though, I grew to enjoy being a kind of hub in the E. Ratliff
> community.

> E. Ratliffs have our secrets, and we stick together.

lmao. Great read.

------
stefantalpalaru
> Ashley Madison does not validate all email addresses

There you go. Everybody gets a perfect excuse for their email showing up in
that database.

~~~
harryh
With a bit of investigation it's easy to find out the lat/long and signup ip
address associated with an email account. Most of the time this should make it
clear if the person in question really did it or not.

~~~
differentView
In 99% of real world situations, the girlfriend or wife will either believe
you or not. Once any experts are hired, the relationship is already over, no
matter what the investigation concludes.

~~~
harryh
I'm not talking about hiring experts here, I'm talking about reading a text
file.

But ya, while I might not go as high as 99% I generally agree with what you're
saying.

------
linkydinkandyou
My gmail address, which I got when gmail just started, is my last name
@gmail.com. There's no first initial, no numbers after it.

Now, my last name isn't that common, but there are probably several thousand
people with it. And I get all sorts of email for all the others with my same
last name who think that last name @ gmail.com will work.

