Mom mistakenly gets thousands of Facebook e-mails meant for teen in Mexico

[Hum]

Kristal McKenzie, who last April began receiving emails from Facebook that clearly were not intended for her.

"When I was pregnant with my son, around 2011, I left Facebook and had no account of my own. And then last April or May, on my new e-mail account, I got something saying I had signed up for Facebook -- but it was in Spanish," McKenzie told FoxNews.com.

McKenzie translated the e-mail, and despite clicking an option to tell Facebook the account wasn't hers, the notifications continued. And continued. In the thousands.

"I've been battling with them for months trying to find a person at Facebook who would listen to me," McKenzie said.

McKenzie tried contacting multiple departments at Facebook, including a safety advisory board because she gleaned that the account belonged to a teenager.

"The young lady who had the account, from whom I was receiving private messages, seemed to be a teenager," McKenzie said. "I don't want to know when her boyfriends write her, you know, love messages."

As the e-mails continued, topping 14,000 notifications, McKenzie approached a journalist at Forbes to draw attention to her plight. The emails finally stopped last week.

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[soumyasch]

Um ... what email service is she using that she couldn't have just classified it as junk and blocked them?

[+Warwagon MVC]

Um ... what email service is she using that she couldn't have just classified it as junk and blocked them?

 

yahoo? :laugh:

[Garry]

Um ... what email service is she using that she couldn't have just classified it as junk and blocked them?

Why should she have to?

 

I have a very, very simple e-mail address and am always being signed up for various sites and services. Not only do I then start receiving all kinds of mail from those websites, but it takes time to unsubscribe.

 

It isn't hard for a site to verify e-mail addresses but surprisingly few do it properly!

 

I now tend to do a forgotten password reset, where possible, thereby locking the user out of their account. Maybe they'll use a real e-mail address next time.