you are falsifying what customer you are. the guy literally said he put in different customer IDs into the URL after he discovered what part of the string was a customer ID. It would equate to a guy walking to your door, saying he's from the electric company, then reading the medical documents on your desk after you let him in.
Oh, you'll love this one. I was sent a notice that my car was ready to pick up, but it was for a guy that lives in Canada and has a similar name/email.
I respond saying the shop has the wrong email address. The shop owner (let's call him Bob) replies saying "that's the one you gave me" facepalm #1
I find the car owner and forward him the info on facebook. He responds back saying "Thanks, Bob." Even though the message is clearly from me. facepalm #2
Even if these people were completely tech illiterate... have they never heard of a wrong number?!?
One time I was at a mall with my dad. There was a nice new car on display and he wanted to go look at it. The salesman said if Dad filled out a postcard to register to win, we could sit in the car and check it out. Dad took the card and filled it out as “Tom” something-or-another. I watched this and kept my mouth shut.
Afterward I asked him about it. He laughed. Tom was Dad’s favorite cousin’s ex-husband. Whenever something like this came up, Dad would give them Tom’s info. He’d been doing this for years, and occasionally updated the address as needed.
Dad’s no longer with us but I still Tom up for things to this day. Should I ever start getting SiriusXM spam, so will Tom.
About 10-12 years ago I crashed/hung a Home Depot POS using Jenny's number. That's when I started using numbers from other businesses instead (actually I started by using the number of the business I was at, but I noticed some places filter on this).
Right - it's extremely unlikely. The fact is, as a small business, I make it a point of communicating with my first treasured customers, so I know almost all of them by name. In almost all cases, I know how they've arrived at my business via friends, recommendations, family etc. And given the situation, I made a very confident guess.
With the local sole proprietor knowing your intimate details, you as the customer know his. You probably go to the same, if not similar church. You also have neighbors who you both have in common. You also know about his life, his children, his wife.
In the end, he's another person (not 'person' like target) who lives in your community.
You'd be surprised how often this happens. I had a similar situation with someone who accidentally used my email when buying a new car.
For a while I was getting emails from the Hyundai dealership that had auto-login links that would have let me do all kinds of things, including requesting a (paid) tow of the car from my house back to the dealership, scheduling (or cancelling) maintenance, ordering extras and part, and more..
Luckily through that logged-in area I was able to find the individual's phone number and we texted back and forth until he understood the problem and called his dealership to update his info.
Someone left a post it note on my friends 2002 4Runner with their phone number in case my friend wanted to sell it. In northeast USA, after 20 years of salted winter roads.
This is awesome, but after going through all the trouble to protect your identity doesn't putting this up online undermine your efforts?
You mention days of the week in the post as well as some details of your exchange with the thief in your replies to his Craigslist ad. He could likely tie it back to you easily if he was informed of this story.
Want to hear something creepier? I was looking to buy a car a couple of years ago, and was checking out a bunch of car dealerships that were adjacent to each other. Shortly after I decided to return home (or perhaps as I started to leave the area, can't recall), I received a promotional SMS from my phone carrier about special car deals.
People forgot why privacy is important and why keeping records is very dangerous and shouldn't be carelessly, if at all, unless there is a genuine need for it.
Unfortunately, and I resent having to say this, I think humanity will need a new lesson before things can get better.
> My fiance got so frustrated with Walmart orders, amazon orders, bills, personal emails being sent to her that she tracked one lady down and called her.
I did that a year or so ago after I couldn't send the person a yard gnome for Christmas on the walmart account they set up using my e-mail. The billing notifications finally stopped on the one account I couldn't disable as they presumably paid off their industrial kitchen stove.
It was an interesting adventure tracking them down since I learned there are only three or four people in the (internet) world with my same first and last name...and a scary amount of information that can be found about people with just a little google-fu.
Should all of these businesses close?
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