My mother's email being used by an unknown account

[Richard_Padgett]

My mother needed to create a paypal account for some business related stuff, but we were very confused seeing her email was already used for an account apparently made in 2014 and it had a name of a person we don't know, i could access the account and change the password,i now have closed it, what could have happened, should we be concerned about this? no transactions were made with the account apparently and it used a billing address we are not familiar with. no harm was done but still very confusing and off-putting.

[PayPal_Martina]

Hi @Richard_Padgett,

Thank you for your post and welcome to the Community Forum!

In general, sometimes, email providers don't differentiate email addresses with or without special characters. For example, if your mother's address was 'name.surname', this would be showing the same as if the email was 'namesurname'. If the account has been closed, your mother should be able to use the email address without issues. If you face a similar problem in the future, please contact our Customer Service directly, and they will have this reviewed. 

I hope this helps!

Martina