No, you cannot confirm your email address (Instagram account irritation)

I got an email like this, telling me the thing I ordered was out of stock and did I want a refund? I logged into the account looking for some alternative contact details for my namesake, but there weren't any besides the postal address, so I cancelled the order and replaced it with one for a cheap ghastly pottery chicken that had a set of pottery spoons up its butt. Perhaps you could take control of this instagram account and put some interesting pictures on it, like a picture of you holding a message explaining the situation.

Confirm the email, change the password, log in, and close the account. Done and done.

Confirm the email, change the password, log in, and close the account. Done and done. Bear in mind clicking on the "confirm" link of something you didn't request could be an elaborate phishing attempt.

That is exactly what I did. Numerous confirmation emails for a Moose Lodge, Chrysler service, tumblr, fantasy football and most recently Match.com. I am still not sure the folks who continually give companys the wrong name realize. What makes things worse is that most of these confirmation e-mails don't accept a reply to correct it.

Confirm the email address, take over the account, and add a picture of a piece of paper on which you've written what happened, telling the kid to email you to get his account back.

If you don't want to do the abovementioned "confirm, change, and close" option you could probably set up a filter in gmail based on enough criteria so that the confirmation emails get routed directly to the trash folder but other stuff from Instagram still gets through.

Set a filter to identify and delete the messages. Anything else is wasting your time.

This sort of thing happens to me a lot (firstnamelastname@gmail, very common name). Most recently I was appointed to baked potato committee for a school in Grand Forks. It's much easier to just ignore it and wait until they figure it out for themselves. You are under no obligation to assist this person. That said: With instagram, you can send a direct message to another user (you may need to follow them to do this). Maybe send them a photo that says something like "Hi Elizabeth Jones! I'm also named Elizabeth Jones, we share the same name. You may have noticed that you have not been able to register your account with [email protected]. That is my email address! You will not be able to register with my email address, please use your own. Thanks! Elizabeth" Also, you probably already do, but make sure you have two step verification on your own gmail.

I've had this gmail problem for years with a number of different people, most of whom, yes, appear to be clueless teenage boys. Many sites will not allow you to respond to the email, many will not allow you to change the password unless you know the current password. I developed a canned gmail response for those sites that allow responses and it often that seems to stop the emails. But generally anymore I just delete the message and move on. Life is short.