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.'"

Re:WTF

[LMacG]

Having worked at Capital One, I can assure you that there is absolutely no shortage of idiots running around.

Re:WTF

[gEvil (beta)]

I already get enough crap email as it is!

- Dylan O'Notreply

Re:you can own the headline domain

[BenSchuarmer]

I got your email. --Don

Cease and Desist Letters for legally owned domains

[PhreakOfTime]

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 [demystify.info] 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 [blackjackandhookers.org] at my blackjack and hookers site.

In fact, forget the blackjack!

Re:WTF

[OglinTatas]

Well, the CEO Don o'Treply was getting tired of getting everyone's bounced emails, THAT's what happened.

I have a suggestion:

[Lxy]

1. Company A uses [e-mail] as it's return address

2. Donotreply owner sets up an autoreply for [e-mail]. This auto-reply should be inappropriate, goatse is definitely an option.

3. Company A loses customers in droves, problem solved.

Re:Cease and Desist Letters for legally owned doma

[moderatorrater]

In fact, forget the blackjack!

I went to hookers.com, and it doesn't look like your site at all! In fact, it's...

Just a minute, my boss just walked up with a box.

I did this once.

[ScottForbes]

Many years ago I (briefly) owned the e-mail address [e-mail], 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. [ncl.ac.uk]

Reminds me of my younger days

[eln]

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 ([e-mail] I think it was, or maybe [e-mail] 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.

"I'll do a quick summery..."

[CFrankBernard]

Excellant!

Re:Cease and Desist Letters for legally owned doma

[karnal]

A Quad-core xeon?

Re:Never thought of "donotreply.com"

[rasman1978]

That's so unprofessional!

I always just use [e-mail].

Re:WTF

[Joe the Lesser]

and, if the commercials are true, vikings!

Heh - Been there, done that

[filesiteguy]

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.

My favorites:

Sent: Sunday, July 04, 1999 8:12 AM
To: [e-mail]
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: [e-mail]
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 ... will continue to write you until I get a response.
Talk about extremely bad customer service.
Chad Weaver

I liked my response:

From: Ponte, Kai <[e-mail]>
Sent: Monday, August 30, 1999 7:20 AM
To: [e-mail]
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

Re:WTF

[HTH NE1]

I've always been partial to [e-mail].

I've also wondered if routing your mail using [e-mail] notation still worked. Could one give out an address like [e-mail] 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.

Re:Business plan

[Anonymous Coward]

As a proud owner of ourcompany.com domain, I don't think your suggestion is sensible at all!

Re:I have a suggestion:

[zotz]

Sounds a bit like the tactic my grandfather said he used to solve a problem...

He had a phone number for years.

Out of the blue, he started getting calls in the middle of the night from security guards checking in on their rounds.

Seems a security company had started up and had a number close to his and the guards were mistakenly calling his number instead of theirs.

He asked the company to change their number. They said no and told him to change his.

The next time he got a call in the middle of the night, he told the guard that he could go home for the night.

Company calls up the next day all upset that he sent the guard home and telling him he couldn't do that.

He says he could and would keep on as long as the calls continued.

Number changed. Calls stopped.

(This is from memory, the details may not be 100% accurate, the gist of the story is as he told me.)

all the best,

drew
http://packet-in.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page [packet-in.org]
Packet In - net band. Libre music available gratis. Could be for a limited time only. Then again, it could last as long as copyrights...

Re:WTF

[TheRaven64]

Exactly. What do they think whitehouse.gov is for?

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that at some point in history you had an ancestor who's first name was Notreply?

Re:He's not just some guy in Seattle...

[megaditto]

Sorry, we forgot about your prize. Contact Chet at [e-mail].

This happened with PO boxes as well...

[mikael]

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.

[e-mail]

[steppin_razor_LA]

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...

Re:I have a suggestion:

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur, we already do this when people link to our images, we swap in "2 girls and a cup" or something offensive. They very quickly stop linking to images :)

Re:WTF

[Your Pal Dave]

More details at snopes: http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/noplate.asp [snopes.com]

Re:WTF

[Damocles the Elder]

What's in your inbox?

Re:WTF

[mrbcs]

I still like clownpenis.fart

Re:I have a suggestion:

[Anonymous Coward]

We had a problem like that at a store where I used to work. It had a number similar to a local Taxi company.

The owner was a bit of a Bastard. When folks would call and ask for a cab, he'd say "Ok; there in 10 minutes" and hang up. Personally I thought this was a bit shitty but what could I do.

Re:I have a suggestion:

[schon]

A few years ago, I started getting phone calls from people asking for "Leanne". Turns out "Leanne" had recently moved, and was giving out my number (mistakenly) to her friends. The calls started coming at all hours of the day and night.

I started telling the callers to tell "Leanne" that she was giving out the wrong number, and to let her friends know about it, but the calls kept coming.

One day at about 4AM, I got woken up with asking if "Leanne" was home. I had an epiphany, and told them "no, she died today." The caller was dumbstruck. I told him that she got hit by a bus on the way home. The caller asked the obligatory "is there anything I can do?" and I said "Yes - can you call all of her friends and let them know the funeral is on Tuesday?"

That was the last call for "Leanne" I ever got.

Re:Uh, no...

[plover]

"Bounced" is the term used by the slashdot submitter in the headline. However, most of these emails were actual humans clicking "reply". They were not originally bounced.

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."

Re:WTF

[Xeth]

At least then you can guarantee the bounced emails won't be taking up disk space?