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

*ahem*

[Spy der Mann]

he chose the nick "n","u","l","l". Not "\0".

which reminds me

[temojen]

I'm constantly editing text my boss writes for publishing on the web that has stuff like "enter your email address (eg: smithj@telus.net)" to say username@example.net.

Whoever smithj@telus.net is should be glad.

Remember folks, example.org, .net, .edu, and .com are reserved for use in documentation and common system names like Postmaster@, abuse@, root@, etc shall not be used for personal email addresses.

Re:You think it's bad *now*

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Negative. The email address I entered was garbled. The editors degarbled it.

Re:Here's an idea:

[TubeSteak]

You're not new here, but did you not get it that you should RTFA?

He likes getting all these texts.
He blocks the most voluminous senders and reads the rest for giggles.