So there’s this girl with my same name in the UK that over the past fews years has used my old hotmail address by mistake.

I think in the UK hotmail addresses end with co.uk. but she uses the .com designation which is mine and has been for about fifteen years. I mainly use it to sign up for newsletters and stuff. But every now and then get a bill or a receipt for her.

Today I received a reset password request to what I thought was some sort of banking thing. It turns out it was an HR program. I decided to reset the password and logged in (it gave me her user ID) in the hopes that I could pull up some information about her.

Well I now have her address, her phone number, her birthdate and her national insurance number.

Basically if I were unscrupulous I could steal her identity like nothing.

I went on facebook looking for someone with her name from the area she’s from and came up with a match. I messaged her and essentially told her that for her own safety she should stop using that address. And of course to disregard if it isn’t her.

She just replied to me and we were able to verfiy using the last four digits of her phone number that it was in fact her. She told me she’s never used that address so I guess whoever has entered it in the past put the wrong thing. I gave her the new password for her HR program and told her she can go in and change everything including her email address. I tried to reassure her that I was just trying to be helpful and she seemed to take it in the way I intended.

Crisis averted.