3 days ago, I got an email saying that a HP laptop was registered under my @gmail id which I considered it spam (did not mark it spam) though it looked like a genuine email from HP. Following the HP laptop registration email I received another email from Microsoft asking me to verify my email id to complete the setup of the Microsoft Account. Then an email from Mcafee saying that their Anti-Virus has been registered under my email id.
Once I received the Mcafee email it struck me that someone did really use my email id to register a laptop. Immediately I contacted Mcafee and they confirmed that my email used to register their anti-virus and said they would get in touch with me in 48 hours.
I investigated the email sent by HP to determine the location of the registrant but was unsuccessful. Further in the day I did try again and the HP website was in Indonesian. I then went to the HP support website and entered the Laptop Model, Serial Number and country as Indonesia.
Voila!
The next page showed details of the laptop and I was sure that the registrant was in Indonesia and possibly the laptop too. Having this information, I looked through HP’s website but they had no proper numbers to their legal team or the concerned department. I dialed up one of the telephone numbers and that routed me to a support person who removed my email id and flagged the laptop for possible re-registration under my email id. But one thing to be noted is that, HP cannot stop the laptop from being re-registered under the same email id. HP also confirmed to me that this laptop was made for the US and purchased in the US. The problem with HP is that they have a global routing number and no available numbers for the US office. Its like HP never has a US office unlike other companies.
The next company to call was Microsoft to report a case of impersonation for the Microsoft account and registration of the Windows OS. I chatted and spoke with 2 Microsoft support agents and ended up sending an email to abuse@outlook.com and one of the support agent sent an internal email for the issue. Microsoft is yet to get back to me on this confirming removal of my email. Here the best part is that a microsoft account can be only created under @hotmail.com or @outlook.com email ids and @gmail.com is just a third party email id.
My difficulty was in trying to get my message to HP.
Their customer support was in India and the person who took my call was unable or may be he did not want to transfer or escalate this problem higher. It was difficult talking with HP
Legality
In my conversation to Mcafee, HP and Microsoft I told them that I am reporting a case of impersonation and failure to take in the report or act on it is a federal offense under the US Law.
Impersonation can happen to anyone and it possibly happened to me. A laptop purchased in the US was registered in Indonesia under my @gmail id. It took me hours of talking with Mcafee, Microsoft and HP to report and get my email id removed from their systems and should get resolved in 48 hours.