My old email account seems to have been merged with another person’s account

[Insightpaul]

My old me.com email seems to have been merged with another person's former icloud.com email which has the same first bit as my me.com address
I get all their emails and I assume they get mine
This has been going on years
Apple are completely unhelpful and the other person is non responsive

Does anyone have any ideas??!

 

[Just_Me_D]

My old me.com email seems to have been merged with another person's former icloud.com email which has the same first bit as my me.com address
I get all their emails and I assume they get mine
This has been going on years
Apple are completely unhelpful and the other person is non responsive

Does anyone have any ideas??!

You can start by creating a new email account and then notifying your recipients of it. Afterwards, request to delete your iCloud account.

 

[SwitchBeach]

It stinks that this happened. But how is this a "massive" data breach?

 

[EdwinG]

My old me.com email seems to have been merged with another person's former icloud.com email which has the same first bit as my me.com address
I get all their emails and I assume they get mine
This has been going on years
Apple are completely unhelpful and the other person is non responsive

Does anyone have any ideas??!

What do you mean by "first bit as my me.com address"?

If it's everything before the @ symbol, that's normal. Side note, it's called the username.
Anyone with a @me.com email address, or even the older ​@mac.com, have received the same username under @iCloud.com automatically. There is nothing to worry there.

There are more details in this Apple Support article: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201771

 

[Ledsteplin]

What do you mean by "first bit as my me.com address"?

If it's everything before the @ symbol, that's normal. Side note, it's called the username.
Anyone with a @me.com email address, or even the older ​@mac.com, have received the same username under @iCloud.com automatically. There is nothing to worry there.

There are more details in this Apple Support article: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201771

Are you saying it's normal to receive someone else's emails?

 

[Up_And_Away]

It stinks that this happened. But how is this a "massive" data breach?

I completely second this. A massive data breach would be an iCloud database has been breached and parts or all of it have been copied by an an unauthorized/illegal source.

With all due respect and with a sorry to see you’re going through something with your email, the title of the post was a GIANT warning signal to me, a completely unnecessary one.

 

[Annie_M]

I have edited the OP’s title since it was (unintentionally) misleading.

 

[EdwinG]

Are you saying it's normal to receive someone else's emails?

That’s not what I’m saying.

What I’m saying is: example@me.com and example@icloud.com are the same mailbox. This is the case since 2012, as described in the article from Apple that I shared.

 

[Mars20]

What can happen (and happened to me with another email account - not Apple) is that someone thinks your email belongs to someone else and keeps sending emails to you instead. This seems to generate further, often spam, emails being sent to you. If a lot come from one particular person you could try and let them know. I still get the odd spam email on that old account, but just delete them.

 

[Up_And_Away]

Excellent point Mars20.
Ultimately an email account isn’t a secure entity. At the discretion and also the whim of an email domain admin, one email account can be redirected to another, even of a different domain. And Unfortunately due to email addresses being sold to marketers, and eventually even lower entities like prolific spammers, and this spanning ever wider, one email account eventually can end up a mess.
I hit that point where I gave up on one account (yahoo) ever not being a marketer, donation and spammer mess.I opened an iCloud email and now I religiously use HideMyEmail for any web accounts I sign up for. The original iCloud address I only give to family and friends. I still keep the yahoo email address and will give that out if using HideMyEmail isn’t available. I then go back later and change the email to a HideMyEmail. So far it has kept the mess almost non existent.
I believe iCloud+ email isn’t the only one to offer a hidemy function. I highly recommend using an email service that offers it.