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What Happens To Bounced @Donotreply.com E-Mails
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post's Security Fix blog today features a funny but scary interview with a guy in Seattle who owns the domain name donotreply.com. Apparently, everyone from major US banks to the Transportation Security Administration to contractors in Iraq use some variation on the address in the "From:" field of all e-mails sent out, with the result that bounced e-mails go to the owner of donotreply.com.'With the exception of extreme cases like those mentioned above, Faliszek says he long ago stopped trying to alert companies about the e-mails he was receiving. It's just not worth it: Faliszek said he is constantly threatened with lawsuits from companies who for one reason or another have a difficult time grasping why he is in possession of their internal documents and e-mails.'"
Having worked at Capital One, I can assure you that there is absolutely no shortage of idiots running around.
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
I already get enough crap email as it is!
- Dylan O'Notreply
This guy's the limit!
I got your email. --Don
I find myself in a somewhat similar situation. I was supposed to do some work for a company who later ended up folding because of 'bad management', and I was left holding the bag on the domain I purchased at their instruction, that they never paid me for.(they didnt want to buy it, I dont know?).
Other than getting all the requests for 'why havent you paid us yet', the end result is that almost 2 years later these people are COMING AFTER ME WITH A CEASE AND DESIST LETTER and demanding that I turn over this domain and others to them for free because it 'infringes on their copyright'. Although, I honestly can say Im not suprised that Caton Commercial, the real estate company who is operating as the umbrella company for all these shell companies who eventually go under, doesnt know its ass from a whole in the ground.
Knowing full well that this sort of behavior is borderline as far as being professional, I posted the full contents of the Cease and Desist Letter sent by a Mr John Argoudelis online so anyone thinking of working with this company may come across this sort of behavior and maybe think twice. Lawyers and Real Estate agents.... whew... what a combo of integrity!
The company is also involved in numerous court cases relating to other aspects of their business practices. Ive posted a short description of the Will County court cases that caton commercial is involved in at my blackjack and hookers site.
In fact, forget the blackjack!
Well, the CEO Don o'Treply was getting tired of getting everyone's bounced emails, THAT's what happened.
More music, fewer hits
1. Company A uses companya@donotreply.com as it's return address
2. Donotreply owner sets up an autoreply for companya@donotreply.com. This auto-reply should be inappropriate, goatse is definitely an option.
3. Company A loses customers in droves, problem solved.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Just a minute, my boss just walked up with a box.
Many years ago I (briefly) owned the e-mail address uucp@aol.com, which received all sorts of interesting messages from platforms that blindly assumed everyone else was running Unix too. After suspending the address and asking AOL to put it on their reserved list (which they did), I wrote it up for the RISKS Digest.
I remember during my very first paying job as a sysadmin (1997-ish), I was tasked to set up a new mail server. For some reason, I decided as part of my testing to send email to an "invalid" remote address that I came up with off the top of my head (bob@bob.com I think it was, or maybe foo@foo.com or something like that). So, I wrote a script that just sent thousands of emails out at once to this address. Within maybe 20 minutes, I get an angry phone call from the domain owner telling me to stop spamming him.
I learned my lesson, though. Now I never put my real phone number in the whois record for my domains.
Excellant!
A Quad-core xeon?
Karnal
That's so unprofessional!
I always just use me@yourmomshouse.com.
MHNATY.
and, if the commercials are true, vikings!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Reminds me of when I was the email admin at Hershey Business Systems - a Los Angeles based integrator - in the '90s. Because the domain - hbsi.com - was taken, the owners took hershey.com back in 1994.
... will continue to write you until I get a response.
My favorites:
Sent: Sunday, July 04, 1999 8:12 AM
To: kai@hershey.com
Subject: From: Kim!!
Hi! grandma I am so thankful that you came all the
way from Florida to see me and by the way..... thanx
for the choc cookie!! and next time you come over
could you bring the extra pleasure condoms. I need
them for me and Ryan.
love you Grandma!!
Kim
Sent: Monday, July 05, 1999 12:09 PM
To: Kim
From: Kai
Subject: From: Kim!!
Kim:
We are not your grandmother.
Kai Ponte
Hershey Business Systems
Then there was this one from an AOL member (figures):
From: TrtleGrl69@aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 1999 2:19 PM
Subject: no response to our email dealing with
dead bugs in my payday
I am extremely disappointed at the fact you have not
responded to this incident. I'm upset that I purchased a
payday and began eating it and ended up seeing a worm like
bug with bug carcasses and holes in and on the candy
bar.
I
Talk about extremely bad customer service.
Chad Weaver
I liked my response:
From: Ponte, Kai <kai@hershey.com>
Sent: Monday, August 30, 1999 7:20 AM
To: TrtleGrl69@aol.com
Subject: RE: no response to our email
dealing with dead bugs in my payday
The worm like creature you found - was it alive?
Did it taste good?
Kai Ponte
Information Technology Specialist
Hershey Business Systems
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
I've always been partial to disabled@bedridden.invalid.
I've also wondered if routing your mail using user%example.org@example.com notation still worked. Could one give out an address like user%example.com@spamfilter.example to run it through a spam filtering service and reject any mail that didn't come via spamfilter.example (if spamfilter.example allowed such relaying syntax)?
Sorry, first disclosure, I can't even patent it now.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
As a proud owner of ourcompany.com domain, I don't think your suggestion is sensible at all!
Exactly. What do they think whitehouse.gov is for?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You do realize that at some point in history you had an ancestor who's first name was Notreply?
Sorry, we forgot about your prize. Contact Chet at chet@donotreply.com.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
This used to happen to people who owned PO Boxes in foreign countries. One time, some people working on charity work kept getting junk mail for fertilizer delivered to their PO Box in Africa. Because they were so far away from the local post office, collecting mail involved a long jeep drive into town to collect the mail from the PO Box. They would be charged a small service fee every time this happened. Despite numerous requests to get the junk mail canceled, the company wouldn't give up. So they go some friends to send back a large box of soil samples through the international Payment-On-Delivery system. They never received another leaflet from the company.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I used to own givesafuck.com and tried using that as a "for fun" email address (i.e. easy for people to remember). I had to give it up because of the same issues. People were constantly making it up as a fake email address. I amused myself a few times by logging into the accounts people created with my email address and resetting their passwords/etc, but eventually give it up due to the spam load...
Evolution: love it or leave it
More details at snopes: http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/noplate.asp
What's in your inbox?
I still like clownpenis.fart
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Some of them are sad and pitiful, and read a lot like, "Please accept these plans to repay my credit so I can buy my children food this week! I am waiting anxiously to hear from you and your Reply Here link wasn't working so I sent this email instead."
John
At least then you can guarantee the bounced emails won't be taking up disk space?
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.