Once upon a time there was an email service alpha being offered in the land of Google. One day, a fair party of the first part (henceforth to be referred to as "the Princess"), got an invite to an alpha and signed up with the standard email user name that she'd be given for years at various jobs: jlarkin, for her first name starts with J and her last name is Larkin.
Now, one thing that must be understood about Larkins is that there is an unwritten rule that their first initial should be either J or L, preferably J. Since it is an unusual last name, there are rarely any other Larkins to contend with, so any J Larkin, upon being hired at a company, tends to be assigned this email username, regardless of the percentage of Larkins who have a first name that starts with J.
"Yay!" she said to herself upon notice that her username was accepted. "It's mine! MINE! No one else can have jlarkin because it's mine! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!" No, she's not the villain. Shush.
For many months, like maybe 12, all was well with the Princess and her email account in the Kingdom of Google. Then, suddenly, she started getting online purchase receipts from an acne medicine company and a prenatal vitamin company, plus a subscription to Disney.com. Turns out that Janet Larkin decided that she had that address. But she was clearly pregnant, so the Princess just got her phone number out of the Disney account and called her to tell her that it's not her address.
Then there was James, who signed her up for his online banking alerts. Since Bank of America's website didn't require that someone verify the email address by clicking on a link in an email sent to it, she got the notices for over a year. After several attempts to get the bank to stop ("I'm sorry but if you're not our customer, I can't help you." "But the PROBLEM is that I'm not your customer!"), the Princess had to alert the FDIC in order to force the bank to take some action. After all, it wasn't her fault if some moron gives away his bank account info, so if he gets his identity stolen, she wants to not get arrested.
There have been vacation photos, funeral announcements, wedding invitations, concrete convention receipts (yes, those apparently exist), a Playstation account, and even people who inform the Princess that the address is "supposed to be" theirs because they signed up for it the day before. Quite often, even polite "Yes, I'm sure it is important that the little league team deadline is tomorrow but I have no idea who that person is. If you manage to get in touch with her, please tell her to stop using my email address" has been met with irate insistence that the Princess put the two of them in touch immediately. But so far nothing tops her response to a request for an interview with Justin Larkin for an entry level tech job: "As a tech industry worker, I sincerely hope that when hiring for technical positions, you only consider people who know their own email address."
And right now, it's Julia. Oh, Julia, Julia. Your phone number is in your Rent.com account but you're so much fun to screw with that that Princess is conveniently forgetting that.
Yes, the world is cold and cruel, and the internet is full of stupid people, so the Princess presents Tales of Identity Donation and we all lived snarkily ever after.
