Old Comcast email owned by another person still fowarding to me after nearly a decade

[makamba]

Maybe a decade ago, I used a Comcast email on my parents Comcast plan (probably shouldn't post the actual address here, but I can message it to a Comcast Admin). My parents have since discontinued that service, and that old email address went back into the wild, and is now owned by another person from accross the country with my same name. I get all sorts of email for this person now because the forwarding rule that I had set up back when I owned the account to send mail from that old Comcast account to my gmail account is still active, even though someone else now owns that account.

When an account is released and taken over by a new customer, why in the world would all the settings not be reset to default, especially forwarding rules? This is a major security concern for people getting recycled email addresses. 

[rightfooted]

That email account might still be yours. Did you last log in less than 9 months ago? Have you tried logging into it?

See https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/using-email-only 

[makamba]

It is not mine, and hasn't been for some time. The new guy clearly lives in a state I've never lived in.  I got house-buying emails from his city, the local democratic party (same city) is emailing him thanking him for his donation, etc. I have not logged into the account in years.  I think I last had access to the account some time between 2012 and 2014, though I'm not 100% sure on that date because I rarely used it even then. I have gotten email sporadically through the years for this address, but recently I started getting a lot of email, so I think it changed hands recently to another person with my same name (it's a pretty common name).

I thought of another scenario, in which Comcast never released the email, but deactivated it, and the reason I'm getting email still is because this other guy who shares my name has incorrectly put the old, deactivated email address as his own in mulitple locations. If this is the case, then it's not nearly so bad, but can I stop getting email for an account I no longer have access to?

Whatever the reason, I should not be getting email for this account any longer as it was long ago deactivated. 

I suppose I could email this person directly (if he does indeed own this email addres) and ask them to look at the forwarding settings, but I think that Comcast should resolve the issue because it is poor policy to leave settings intact when recycling email addresses and they need to ensure that moving forward, all settings for recycled email accounts are purged when the accounts are deactivated, or if it's an issue with me still getting mail on a deactivated account, actually deactivate it so I stop getting mail for it. 

[Latoque]

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@makamba wrote:

It is not mine, and hasn't been for some time. The new guy clearly lives in a state I've never lived in.  I got house-buying emails from his city, the local democratic party (same city) is emailing him thanking him for his donation, etc. I have not logged into the account in years.  I think I last had access to the account some time between 2012 and 2014, though I'm not 100% sure on that date because I rarely used it even then. I have gotten email sporadically through the years for this address, but recently I started getting a lot of email, so I think it changed hands recently to another person with my same name (it's a pretty common name).

I thought of another scenario, in which Comcast never released the email, but deactivated it, and the reason I'm getting email still is because this other guy who shares my name has incorrectly put the old, deactivated email address as his own in mulitple locations. If this is the case, then it's not nearly so bad, but can I stop getting email for an account I no longer have access to?

Whatever the reason, I should not be getting email for this account any longer as it was long ago deactivated. 

I suppose I could email this person directly (if he does indeed own this email addres) and ask them to look at the forwarding settings, but I think that Comcast should resolve the issue because it is poor policy to leave settings intact when recycling email addresses and they need to ensure that moving forward, all settings for recycled email accounts are purged when the accounts are deactivated, or if it's an issue with me still getting mail on a deactivated account, actually deactivate it so I stop getting mail for it. 

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I'm going to escalate this to the forum admins for follow-up.  You should see a response from a Comcast employee here in this thread.  I don't think I've ever encountered this phenomenon before in the forum.

[ComcastAmira]

Hello @makamba, thanks for reaching out to our Digital Care Team through our Forums page! I'm sorry to hear about the troubles you have experienced thus far around this. This is definitely odd and I would be more than happy to further look into this on my end. Can you please send me a private message including the email address? 

To send me a Private Message, please click my name “ComcastAmira” and click “send a message". 

[pmusic]

I have a similar but slightly different situation. I've had the same Comcast e-mail address for almost 20 years. Occasionally over the years, and increasingly in the past few months, I have received what seem to be legitimate e-mails to my e-mail address but someone else's name (which matches my address in such a way as to be legit). I've gotten their New York Times subscription, order confirmations, and I think there was even some personal correspondence years ago. Now today I received a reminder to return for the follow-up vaccine shot for COVID-19. This is obviously a big deal and would like to figure out what's going on.

I have a friend who hasn't been able to use her Comcast email account because her username was apparently given to someone else and the messages keep getting confused. How do I find out if that is what has happened here?