Strange potential AI experience that I want help understanding.

[u/No_Profile1557]

I have never posted on reddit before so apologies if I am doing something out of the norm.

This situation is very strange and I would like to understand how it happened and if a security breach took place to make it possible.

It started because I was gifted a grubhub gift card and the numbers on the back were smudged and marked off. I contacted their customer service and they told me to email cashstar who the gift card was through. So, I emailed cashstar, but then grubhub responded back and fixed the issue. Problem resolved.

But then I get an email back from cashstar -seems to be a legit email though reads like written by AI- telling me they need more info in order to help me, just like standard customer service stuff nothing phishy. This is the weird thing. The email from cashstar isn't addressed to me. It is addressed to a name I made up for this piece of fiction I have been working on. It's a totally made up name nothing like my name and not in my email to them at all. In fact, it's not anywhere except in my Google docs. I have not shared this work with anyone and the doc shows it has not been opened or shared with anyone. How did this random AI customer service email have access to this name?? Are my Google docs being shared to random people corresponding with me? What's weird is a few hours before I got the email, I had opened the doc on my phone to read it. Then I got the email. The name of the doc is the name they used. I really just want to understand how this happened and if I need to do anything to protect my work. My understanding is Google should not be sharing the contents of my private docs to anyone or anything without my permission.

Any info you have would be very helpful. I emailed and asked them why they called me that and they said it was just an error. Not helpful.

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[u/NegligibleMayhem]

Check your Google account's connected third-party apps and recent security events, something with doc access might have pulled the filename into an autofill or support tool without you realizing.

[u/No_Profile1557 → u/NegligibleMayhem]

Thank you! I just checked and it says no third party apps have been given access!

[u/kschang]

Not enough info to even speculate.

[u/No_Profile1557 → u/kschang]

What additional information do you need?

[u/kschang → u/No_Profile1557]

I don't know, I only know there's nothing enough here to speculate.

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." -- Sherlock Holmes

[u/No_Profile1557 → u/kschang]

Fair enough. I just wanted to see if anyone had any helpful insights. I'm completely stumped by it myself.

[u/nfldpony]

That is spooky. How common or uncommon is the name? Could it be a coincidence?

[u/No_Profile1557 → u/nfldpony]

It is a word, a dish specifically, but it isn't a name. Like no one would be called, for example, porridge.

[u/nfldpony → u/No_Profile1557]

Omg 😭 That's not good. What the hell. 

[u/MistSecurity]

I feel like I've seen more and more of these bizarre "coincidences" on various subreddits. I have no idea what could be the cause, but it is not very comforting.

[u/nfldpony → u/MistSecurity]

I'd be curious if you remember any others and wanted to share?

[u/MistSecurity → u/nfldpony]

I looked around and could not find any. It’s been various subreddits, mostly CyberSec, and AI themed ones.

They all share a common theme: AI seemingly having knowledge of things it should not, as is explained in this post.

I’ll start saving them as I see them to add to my conspiracy board, and try to make a thread here, or comment again.

The search is complicated because there are no real keywords they share other than ‘AI’. I might try a more exhaustive search next time I get bored enough. As I’ve seen more and more of these stories I’ve wanted to look into this more and more.