The Story of "Nadine"

Guinnessy writes: "We've all accidentally typed in a wrong email address sooner or later. But can it all go horribly wrong? On http://www.spamresource.com there is the story of Nadine, an account of what happened after an Internet user accidentally gave a wrong email address when she visited a web page and signed up for a sweepstakes. Live in fear...."

I've read this before (spoilers)

[Telastyn]

Apparently the story is about a slashdotted webserver...

nice job!

[flynt]

We've all accidentally typed in a wrong email address sooner or later.

Classic Slashdot grammar!

All your base...

[Debillitatus]

We've all accidentally typed in a wrong email address sooner or later.

What you say?!?

Idea!!! Lets get revenge!

[jeanluisdesjardins]

Lets start slashdoting spammers!

Re:Old News

[gambit3]

yeah, but at least it was the SAME Old news [slashdot.org] that it was yesterday!

Re:Typoing your email address can be a drag

[brer_rabbit]

kind of like mistyping a stock ticker? Buying 100 shares of SUN versus SUNW can be pretty pricey (and no, I wouldn't know anything about such an incident. I'll deny it all).

This = Great way to kill off a hotmail account ...

[indiigo]

I purposely have done this.

See, I signed up for a hotmail in it's early stages ('97). I used it for everything, including online purchasing, friends, family, you name it. At some point something happened-- one of the forms I filled out, or someone sold my same, and I started to get mail addressed to my real name, at that address. This semi-scared me.

So recently I went to cancel the account. Hotmail by default will consider your account "cancelled" after inactivity of 90 days. I cannot click something that says "Forever, never use this e-mail" My fear is that others will get this e-mail after I have cancelled it, and they will see my real name.

The best solution I have come up with is to fight fire-with-fire. I now sign up for every mailing list I can, each with a different real name. I now belong to over 400 mailing lists(including /.), some legit commercial businesses, some obvious spam. The mailbox fills up roughly every 30 hours. I plan to continue this for a few months, until it will be impossible to distinguish my real name from the fake names. Whomever picks up the account next will be in for a treat as they open their account and start getting thousands of messages a day, random names, and all.

It's so sad it's come to this.

Re:I do it all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure thing. I always use either [e-mail] or [e-mail], since those are the two people that really can do something to stop spammers, if they would only want to...

Re:Typoing your email address can be a drag

[mshomphe]

Dragging this offtopic, a good friend of mine was told to invest in Cisco Systems a few years ago. But he just heard the name and, being a non-techie, bought a bunch of shares in Sysco [sysco.com], the food services company.

Cisco went down, Sysco went up. Talk about pulling a Homer....

Original

[Pac]

Now, if you really want to impress us, come up with a search that returns all pages in the correct order.

:)

But did she win?!

[pyrrho]

I read the whole thing and I still don't know if she won the sweepstakes and then the poor dear didn't even hear about it or get her oodles of cash.

Re:Fake Email Addresses

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're the one who's responsible for all the spam I've been getting!!!! YOU BASTARD!

Walter Igglebroggle
FrogToggle Enterprises

:)

Re:I wish.

[conradp]

Spammers aren't smart, but they're probably smart enough to strip the ".gov" addresses before they fire up the spam blasters.

Maybe some are, but plenty of them are not. I've received a fair amount of spam at my "af.mil" account. A short note to the owner of the spamming domain or advertised service, including some mumbling about misuse of federal government computer systems constituting a federal crime, usually shuts them up, without even needing to point out the fact that they're sending spam to an organization with precision GPS-guided munitions!

Re:even better.

[cybermage]

The email talked about their time together and how she was having second thoughts when she called his house and his wife answered.

I responded that she must have the wrong email address.

You could have told her that your, that is his, wife was interested in a threesome and watch the sparks fly instead.

If you feel like a little mischief, mistaken identity can be a beautiful thing.

Re:Fake Email Addresses

[0xA]

I do this too. I pity the poor bastard who has [e-mail]

:)