How A Couple Of Transposed Letters Taught Me About The Internet

The last few weeks have been a little strange. I'm sure you've mistyped things before, it happens. I probably will do it about seventy times writing this post alone.  Well, mistyping and my strange spelling of my name has taught me some.... almost scary stuff recently.

My name is spelled a little funkily.  It's not Rebecca, Rebekka, or  more importantly, Rebekah. It's not that common a spelling that I've seen. I'm sure there are people out there who share my spelling, but I haven't met them. So as a consequence of that, I have a pretty straightforward personal email address. It's just Rebehka @ blah blah.com.  Not that surprising that I was the first  to choose that one.

I was checking my email a few weeks ago, when I saw an odd message. It was congratulating me for signing up for a web service called Food 4 Patriots. I was skeptical, 'cos I've seen emails where some spammer is trying to convince you that you ordered crap when you didn't, trying to trick you into something. I didn't think much about it and just deleted it. But then the next week, I got another one about an order placed with them. I got curious and opened it.

It was legit. It just wasn't for me. It was for someone named Rebekah. The email had her full name, address, the whole shebang, important information. I realized, she must have the email Rebekah at blah blah.com. 

I contacted the company and told them I didn't order anything, and they promptly cancelled the order - by sending me an email. I contacted them again to let them know that hey, I didn't order this, but this girl did, she's just got her email address in wrong. They let me know they'll take my email address out of it and get it resolved. I don't know why I had this instinct, but I wanted to find her and let her know. It might sound creepy but it was coming from a good intentioned place.

I found her on LinkedIn and sent her a message and as far as I know that's the end of it. But it gave me pause for a bit.  It was a little strange and a little scary that I found her that easily. If I was a criminal or some kind of jerk, I mean... I easily could find her  house on Google Maps. I could know where she works from LinkedIn. I could know about her interests by looking at the order. It was so simple to find this person across the country with a completely different life and interests that seemingly would never intersect. It was very naive of me, but I guess I don't think about stuff like that - we're a few clicks in a search away from each other in any given minute. Then I asked myself why I bothered to search for her, when I probably could have just emailed Rebekah at blah blah.com, since that must be what her email address is. But I guess that's what life is like these days.  I learned a little something about the internet, and about myself, I suppose. We're not as protected or as private as we think.

And now I know from the website she ordered from that there are some very paranoid/prepared people out there who like making their own butter.

Internetly yours,
Behka