College Student Receives Email of the Lost

dots and loops wrote to mention an eWeek article that's something of a life lesson: Don't be too smart for your own good. The article tells the tale of a college student who cleverly chose null@vtext.com as his cellphone email address. He's been getting thousands of wayward emails and text messages since 2001. From the article: "Initially, the content of the messages was innocuous, he said. It was things like don't forget to drop the car off at baker's and to call mom at 781-XXX-XXXX, stuff like that, Bubrouski wrote. The problem worsened in mid-2002, when Bubrouski's phone began channeling what he claims were dozens of messages from an e-mail address used by General Motors' then-new "OnStar" system. The messages quickly filled up the memory on his cell phone and contained diagnostic response to tests on a beta version of OnStar. 'Basically, peoples' cars were sending messages to my phone, Bubrouski wrote. "

Comments

You think it's bad *now*

[Weaselmancer]

Slashdot just put your email address on their home page. Unscrambled.

Hmmm...wonder what a variant of the Slashdot effect is going to do to a cellphone?

Re:You think it's bad *now*

[Anonymous Coward]

You should do what I do when sites ask for an email address, and just use "null@vtext.com". I don't know if it's a real address, but it's worked fine for me for probably 5 years now. I even used it for my car's OnStar.

Re:You think it's bad *now*

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's your new email address?

Me too!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't tell you how many misrouted emails I've gotten for some great stock market tips, interesting (and I do mean interesting) pictures, some pretty amazing medications, and even offers for prestigious non-accredited degrees!

I almost feel bad taking advantage of people who accidently send me these deals by mistake.

I wonder if he chose

[n0dna]

867-5309 for the number?

car spam

[digitaldc]

In the world of software design, "Null" is commonly used to represent "no value" or "0." Developers of mobile services use the "Null" address during testing routines, assuming that the messages won't be sent to anyone.

I wonder if he even thought about this before he got that address.
Now the question is - can he sue for textual harassment?

Another good username

[chowbok]

Many years ago, I worked at an ISP where a customer chose "core" for his username. A weekly OS cleanup script kept deleting his mail spool.