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*

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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

This is actually quite serious. I have had one story posted on Slashdot, and because I didn't have a homepage, the editors put in my unscrambled email address. The story was copied and pasted verbatum by countless sites all over the next.

That address was almost rendered unusable. Only the bayesian span fliters in thunderbird salvaged it. Still, it was pretty irritating to see an address I had been quite careful with destroyed because the Slashdot editors didn't consider carefully what they were doing.

Re:You think it's bad *now*

[ElleyKitten]

Verizon does not charge the recipient of a text message.

That explains why he kept the account for 5 years.

Re:You think it's bad *now*

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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

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?