Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: Have You Ever Gotten Someone Else's Email? (ieee.org)
Wave723 shares an article from IEEE's Spectrum:
I was scrolling through emails on my phone one recent morning when a strange message appeared among the usual mix of advertisements and morning newsletters. It was a confirmation for an upcoming doctor's appointment in New York City, but came from an address I'd never seen before. And at the top, there was a friendly note: "I guess this is for you :)" The note, I would later learn, was written by a Norwegian named Andre Nordum whose email address is just a few letters different from my own... he'd Googled my name to try to track down my personal email address and forward the message to me.
All day, I thought about Andre's act of digital kindness and the heartwarming fact that a stranger had spent time and effort trying to send me a bit of important information. I also felt a twinge of guilt: I'd received emails in the past -- from car dealerships and daycares -- that were clearly meant for other people, and I'd never forwarded any of them along.
The 33-year-old Norwegian banker later joked that he did it because "I did not want to get emails about your dermatology history for the foreseeable future." But another Norwegian has been returning mis-directed emails for over a decade with mundane stories about the family dog and games of pickleball -- meant for another E. Nordrum.
"It's a little bit like sitting on the bus or overhearing somebody in the restaurant or something," he says, admitting that when they finally stopped coming, "I was a little bit sad, actually." In 2017 the other E. Nordrum flew from America to Norway on a vacation, finally meeting the man who'd been returning all his mis-addressed emails -- and they ended up talking for hours.
The article calls it a reminder "of how downright pleasant it can sometimes be to interact with strangers on the Internet." But it also asks an interesting question: "Do these email mix-ups happen to everyone? " I know I'm still getting emails about a storage space somebody opened 1300 miles away. And Slashdot reader antdude writes, "A few days ago, I got an USC.edu's doctor email (CCed with a few other people) about an upcoming surgery for a transplant. I was like huh?"
How about the rest of Slashdot's readers. Have you ever gotten someone else's email?
All day, I thought about Andre's act of digital kindness and the heartwarming fact that a stranger had spent time and effort trying to send me a bit of important information. I also felt a twinge of guilt: I'd received emails in the past -- from car dealerships and daycares -- that were clearly meant for other people, and I'd never forwarded any of them along.
The 33-year-old Norwegian banker later joked that he did it because "I did not want to get emails about your dermatology history for the foreseeable future." But another Norwegian has been returning mis-directed emails for over a decade with mundane stories about the family dog and games of pickleball -- meant for another E. Nordrum.
"It's a little bit like sitting on the bus or overhearing somebody in the restaurant or something," he says, admitting that when they finally stopped coming, "I was a little bit sad, actually." In 2017 the other E. Nordrum flew from America to Norway on a vacation, finally meeting the man who'd been returning all his mis-addressed emails -- and they ended up talking for hours.
The article calls it a reminder "of how downright pleasant it can sometimes be to interact with strangers on the Internet." But it also asks an interesting question: "Do these email mix-ups happen to everyone? " I know I'm still getting emails about a storage space somebody opened 1300 miles away. And Slashdot reader antdude writes, "A few days ago, I got an USC.edu's doctor email (CCed with a few other people) about an upcoming surgery for a transplant. I was like huh?"
How about the rest of Slashdot's readers. Have you ever gotten someone else's email?
Whoever owns @test.com must earn a lot of money from selling all the information that goes to their catch-all inbox.
I received the approval for a €1.5 million mortgage, including proof of income etc.
It was mend for a doctor with my first name as his last name and I have an alias mail address with just my first name, in his case there should be a first name in front of the last name.
Interesting to see how well some people are doing but then I send it back to the bank who apologised.
For years I had been trying to get that nice and short mail address but it was already in use until one day it was available and I immediately claimed it. Later I heard my ISP locks released account names for 12 months before handing them out again.
Not much later I was receiving commercial mails on my newly acquired address, one of them from a travel agency.
Out of curiosity I followed the link in the mail to the account on the travel website but it required a password, I clicked the 'Forgotten password' link and received a new one.
Once in the account I saw an address in Amsterdam where the man was living and also noticed it allowed booking of flights, hotels etc against a credit card associated with the account, scary!
Again a little later I received a personal invitation to some event, I replied explaining I was not the person that previously used the mail address.
This time I received a reply including the new mail address of the guy and I could finally report to him that his travel account was dangerously open...
He told me he had forgotten this one and I handed him the new password and all was good.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
It's been a couple of years (2011), but for a couple of weeks I got multiple emails a day all originating from the Indian branch of a large global travel agency that you've most likely heard of. My gmail address happened to be similar to the name of one of their travel offices, and I guess that's what they were trying to use for their internal emails.
/I immediately deleted all of these emails and their attachments immediate after sending the notice //Always check your recipient address, folks
///And don't send unencrypted JPGs of other people's passports to complete strangers on a gmail account
Not just any emails though -- it would mostly be scans of customer passports and other ID, travel visa applications, etc. Things that should NEVER be sent by email in the first place, let alone to an external free address on hosted a different continent and ESPECIALLY NOT unencrypted..
The first bunch of times I replied with a friendly message pointing out their error, and asked to please make sure to use the right address -- but they kept sending things. The next few dozen notices I sent got progressively less friendly. No change. I briefly considered just ignoring them altogether but felt bad for their customers getting screwed over and having their vacations or other travel plans fall through.
I also send a direct emails to the main email address listed on the website of the travel office explaining the situation, to no avail. The only thing that finally stopped it was sending a nastygram to their UK parent company asking them what kind of Mickey Mouse outfit they were running by their ongoing efforts to send me their confidential customer information despite my continuous reminders not to. Although the emails stopped abruptly after that, even the parent company never acknowledged or replied to my notice. No one ever did.
So... Just keep that in mind should you ever 'need to' hand over your passport to a travel agency or have them help you with a travel visa -- no guarantee that they didn't forward it to a complete stranger using a free mail account on the other side of the planet. A less morally inclined recipient could have REALLY screwed some people over.
Ugh. Landlines.
Back before ubiquitous cellphones and number portability and when moving to a new town meant getting a new local number that might have belonged to someone else in the past...
I had just moved towns and gotten a new number for my new place. Turned out MY new phone number had used to belong to someone who'd skipped out on some bills. Which, of course, meant that the debt collectors, scummy and dimwitted creatures that they are, started harassing ME. No amount of: first, semi-courteously correcting their screwup; then, telling them unequivocally to stop calling me; then, telling them to go fuck themselves in increasingly creative ways; and eventually, blowing the loudest and most shrill whistle I could find into the phone; would get them to knock off the crap. Eventually, I wound up having to play along long enough to find out where they were located; and start calling their local police and sheriffs' offices and reporting them repeatedly for harassment. Even then, it didn't stop entirely. But it brought the number down to a level that I didn't have to get a new phone number.
Imagine all the people...