Edited to add: Thanks so much for all responses. For context, my name is not a common name, which may be why it seemed too iffy that someone would both have the exact same name AND their email address be close enough they could have typo-ed it. However, I learned from Redditors about punctuation in gmail addresses being ignored. It seems like Google dropped the ball on that one! Thank you to the Redditor(s) who explained that. And again, I feel bad if this was an honest mistake but went with the agent's recommendation to cancel due to the concern about identity theft.
Jan 18th I got an email confirming a flight from a mid-east coast city to a more southern east coast city. I hadn't made any such reservation (and live 2000 miles from both cities) so I chalked it up to spam.
Today I received a reminder about my upcoming flight - it departs tomorrow.
I checked the airline's app - no such flight is in the app. But the name on the ticket is mine and it's coming to my email. It included a confirmation number so on a whim I tried looking up the reservation using the confirmation number and my last name and voila! It popped right up. The phone number associated with the reservation has an area code that matches the departure city.
I called the airline and they said all they can tell me is that the booking was made via a mobile app on Jan 18th. I explained that on my mobile app no such booking is shown and she said maybe I logged out of the app before booking the flight (which makes no sense - I can logout on the website but the app, once I installed it and logged in, stays logged in to me - I don't have to login each time I access it).
I asked her what credit card was charged for the flight and she said she couldn't tell me but that it would be in the original confirmation email which I pulled up and yep, it does show the last 4 digits of the card used and it doesn't match any of my cc's.
So what's the scam here - a flight booked in my name, using my email address but the phone and credit card used are not mine. I'm completely baffled.
And just in case you're wondering, at the agent's suggestion, we canceled the flight. I feel bad if it is a legit error on someone's part and they rock up to the airport tomorrow to get on their flight and find it canceled but I can't get past the part where it is in my name and all emails have come to my real email address. Surely if someone of the same name as me booked a flight they wouldn't also typo and end up with my real email address too?