Update apple ID. Someone is using my email address as their ID

Yes, I get email receipts at this address on a regular basis. I truly looks like Apple allowed someone to use my email as their ID. The person was not able to verify it though since they didn't have control of the email address. I do not recall getting an email when the person tried to do this though ....... I don't check every email I get from Apple so I could have missed it.

I seem to be up and running. We shall see!

I am having this issue as well. When going through the iOS 5 setup I was asked to enter an Apple ID. It rejected my 2 "usual" email addresses saying those Apple ID's already existed. So I used a backup third address and it went through. When I logged into the Apple ID site with the third email address and was asked to pick a user name it showed my contact email address as one of the 2 that was rejected.

So clearly your Apple ID can be whatever you want. I could make mine Barack.Obama@usa.gov if I wanted to, as this is not tied into the actual email address used to communicate on the account.

I tried the lost password option on the 2 primary email addresses and never received any password reset email, so clearly whoever is using my email addresses as their Apple ID's has a different contact email address on the account.

This needs to be solved ASAP - Apple must have people VERIFY these email addresses.

Same problem here. I've ignored it for awhile, but now with all the iCloud/Facetime/etc business it's really becoming a pain. Somebody else is using my personalemail@gmail.com as their ID, and when I try to do the password reset I never get the email, so they've obviously got another one in there. Also, I cannot go through birthday verification since I don't know their birthday. I've ended up using personal.email@gmail.com as my own Apple ID, since that gets delivered to my inbox.

Tried the Apple support route a few months ago and it looked like they were ready to help me out by removing the email from this other person's account, but they wimped out and told me they couldn't help.

It's true, you can grab any email you want if nobody else has, and Apple does nothing to verify it. Once it's grabbed, nobody else can associate it with their Apple ID.

This is a big messy problem; hopefully Apple comes up with a solution soon.

One more person having this same problem. How can Apple let this happen?

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This same issue just happened to me during my iPhone setup.

Just like most people on this thread, my gmail account was utilized by someone else. Luckily, I was able to reset the password by choosing the e-mail option and (so far) reclaim my ID. The only things I had to change were the birthday and security question. Hopefully, this makes it impossible (for the simple minded) to utilize my new Apple ID. This also reminded me to change all my passwords - not that an Apple ID mishap warrent's much concern.

This is a problem that should be addressed by Apple. I figure it can be easily fixed if Apple required e-mail verification during account set up.

Good luck!

I actually just had this issue. I'm not saying this is the same issue you have, but apparently the email address I thought had been usurped was listed as my 'secondary' email address on my primary account. Because it was my secondary email, it wouldn't let me create the new account. After signing in to the 'manage account' with my Primary account, I deleted the secondary email and was able to create it immediately. Apple actually does have a verification process. I hope this helps.

I'm not sure if u still want this since this post is pretty old, but all u have to do is goto "manage your account" is "My Apple ID" (google it if u dont know where it is) and press "edit" on ur apple ID. You should be able to take it from there. Hopes this helps guys 😉

Hi..i am facing the same problem, but somehow , whenever i try to log in it says incorrect password. I tried to reset it but the reset link is being mailed to some other email id. This is a scary situation specially when i have my credit card details . I had to trasnfer all the money to a new account as a result.

Can anyone tell me how to go about solving this problem ??

<Email Edited by Host>

it might'nt be someone else using your email address, they might've made a typo with their (similar to yours) email addres or in some cases the user has more than one AppleID and the email you want to use is already associated with another one of you (unknown) accounts, AppleCare senior support might be able to help with this

Oh God so I'm not on my own here , I had the exact same problem yesterday, sorry I know this thread is a little old but

This was freaking me out.

I tried using my email address, told me its already in use and to change my password.

So i went ahead and did that and it was changed, still wouldnt let me use it as my id .

Next day went into"manage account" and there I see all the information on it is not mine from the name to the address and number ... I only changed the security question for now n left the info there.

I'm confused as to what benefit would someone get by using my email address ? Couldn't they use their own ?

(Gonna report this person to apple since I have all the info ) but I'm actually afraid to use my email address nw just in case someone has access to it when I have my billing info etc filled in so I'm using a new iCloud one

This problem STILL exists. I'm having it right now. So far, nothing can be done. Absurd.

And yes, it is certainly someone else trying to use my email address as their Apple ID. According to Apple Support, the account associated with my email address has a different person's name, with a different birthday, and answers to security questions that have nothing to do with me, not to mention a credit card number that I've never owned or used (I've only ever had one).

They've tried sending me an email to reset my password, but it won't go through. Why? Because this person was never able to verify their email address, because they can't log into my email account because they don't have my password because they're not me. Which begs the question, why on earth do you even send a verification email if, when I never responded to it, the Apple ID is still able to be used? Aren't you sending that so I can either say, "Yep, this is me, and this is my email account," or, "No... that's some other idiot using my email address as their Apple ID. Delete that thing!" What other purpose does that email serve?

It's terribly frustrating. I'm posting on this forum a year later in desperation only (an exaggeration - this is by no means a life and death situation, merely an exceptionally irritating one). If by some strech of luck someone has found a way to fix this, please, by all means, let me know.

Actually, for anyone still curious, I just came up with a clever partial solution for gmail users. I don't know if this would apply at all to other users.

I'm going to tell the story of how I came across this. If you'd rather not waste your time, just skip down to THE SOLUTION. Everything you need to know is there. I just want to brag a little.

I discovered another forum where a user had a similar but different problem. He was a gmail user who had no interest in having an Apple ID at all. Unfortunately, someone had used his email address as their Apple ID. His concern was that he kept receiving this person's emails for their Apple ID account! He went on to find out that this person wasn't using his exact email address. If his username was bobjones@gmail.com, this random person had entered their email address for their Apple ID as bob.jones@gmail.com. They'd put in a period. Many email providers allow users to implement periods in their account names; gmail does not. In fact, in any case where an email is sent to a gmail address and periods are included, the periods are completely ignored. To gmail, bobjones@gmail.com is the same as bob.jones@gmail.com, and the same as b.o.b.j.o.n.e.s@gmail.com. Send an email to all three, and bobjones@gmail.com will receive them all. This user was never able to get his problem solved, as far as I can tell. The person who had used his email address was unwilling to change it, convinced that they were using their actual email address (dumb). He still receives this person's Apple emails to this day.

But this is good news for gmail users whose email address has been used by someone else as their Apple ID.

THE SOLUTION:

Create a new Apple ID using your real, legitimate gmail address - just add in a period wherever you want. If your gmail address is actually tomsmith@gmail.com, create a new Apple ID and make the email address tom.smith@gmail.com, or t.omsmith @gmail.com, or whatever you want. When you finish creating that Apple ID, you will have an email waiting in your real gmail inbox, tomsmith@gmail.com, asking you to verify your tom.smith@gmai.com Apple ID. And if you've been as frustrated as I've been, you will suddenly feel like the king of the world.

Despite how old this thread is, I hope this helps someone.

Hi lukemccusker -- thanks for validating my problem has to do with gmail's disregard for the period in a username. Here's my story:

I have used (fictionalized) mary.smith@gmail.com as my email for years -- I always use the period for readability. I have occasionally gotten marysmith@gmail.com mail, and it's not been a problem. When I got an apple ID, I made it "mary.smith@gmail.com."

Until someone started thinking their email was marysmith@gmail.com, and is using that as her apple ID. Of course, I get all her "someone's doing something, please verify" emails, and of course I don't verify. I have no idea what her email really is -- maryasmith (or any other middle initial), or whatever. I did make contact with smithmary@gmail.com, who pleasantly looked into it, and confirmed she wasn't using marysmith inadvertently. (Our mutual name isn't nearly as common as Mary or Smith, so it's surprising.)

Today, someone (presumably the same mystery person) tried to create a Facebook account with marysmith@gmail.com, and I got that "please verify." Hopefully Facebook is more stringent than Apple about making people verify. I added the marysmith@gmail.com address to my FB account (and did verify *that* email, not the others), so hopefully she'll figure out that address is not hers.

So, lukemcc -- your solution is partial, because someone already owns marysmith@gmail.com as an AppleID. I tried to claim it/verify it by signing up for a new Apple ID, but it says it already exists as an Apple ID. I've gotten plenty of those "Your apple ID was used to sign into FaceTime on an iPhone <version I don't have>", etc., messages.

I suppose I could use the "forgot password" link to "hijack" her account, but I don't think I really want to do that.

Best answer would be for the "create a new Apple ID" process to strip periods from gmail.com IDs when it checks if a proposed ID is already being used. And if Apple support could come up with a reporting mechanism for these cases.

So as a 15 year IT Windows professional and CIO of my company today is my first experience with the Apple iPad after years of resistance. I am evaluating the devices as a result of an impending merger with an organization who have a few executives already using Apple products.

Considering the fact that this thread is two years old and I have the exact same problem with my personal e-mail account which I have had for the last 12 years it seems some of my hesitation about adopting a product not ready for business is not unfounded. I will try and resolve this issue because I think it is fundamental and must be resolved even though per this thread Apple may have no clue about what is appropriate ID security is and how important verification processes are to professionals. Personally I think Apple should force authentication and in these specific cases contact the offender and force them to change their ID.

Very poor first impression!