A random Nigerian prince who needs to get money out of the country.
Haven't the foggiest what you're on about, old bean.
You'll join the board and can control the company, the person who sent it will go to debtor's prison, and any proceedings related to the matter will be held before a secret FISA/admiralty court in the quarterdeck of the USS Constitution.
That's my formal legal advice.
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Is anyone else ticked off by Google's latest revamp? When I want to do the search, I'll hit "enter." And not even accommodation of the lazy can justify displaying search results before one is done typing the word.
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My question is, if I print out, sign, and return this, who becomes a member of the board?
Your mother?
6, 7: You people are old fashioned. It's great.
I say do it and find out. Maybe he'll stop emailing you when he has his own panicked meeting with lawyers.
Wait. I might be in the bitter stages. Also, that advice may have more to do with my own fondness for schadenfreude.
I mean, you know this guy (the repeat emailer) is almost certainly committing securities fraud or more simple fraud, right? Reporting him to the SEC or FTC or the Cal Atty General's office would probably be the best revenge.
I'm actually a little bemused as to who the email came from. Ben reports it as coming from this surnamesake of his, but also reports as consisting of an offer to assume a position on the board to the same guy -- wouldn't the offer come from someone other than the person the offer was being made to?
Which means I'm not sure that anything fishy's going on, because I can't tell what's going on.
I mean, you know this guy (the repeat emailer) is almost certainly committing securities fraud or more simple fraud, right?
Well, no, I don't know that. If it makes a difference, the emails go not only to me but also to someone who plausibly does really have the name he seems to think I have. (If I had your email address I would forward you the most recent one so you could better see what I mean.)
14: Never mind, I reread. The emails are coming from a correspondent of Ben's surnamesake, not from the surnamesake himself. I don't quite see what's necessarily fishy about them, though.
I'm actually a little bemused as to who the email came from. Ben reports it as coming from this surnamesake of his
Where? I'm not reading anything that I interpret that way.
Ben reports it as coming from this surnamesake of his
No, it comes from someone else. In fact why don't I just post it here?
"""[prevailed upon by cooler heads]
"""
With an attachment, in letter form, complete with [someone else]'s address.
There's also a notice about INTENDED RECIPIENTS, etc. Oops!
I keep getting, and ignoring, emails from someone who insists we have spoken on the phone about my desire to order lab supplies from him (we haven't, and I don't do lab work), and who seems increasingly distraught about my failure to follow up by ordering these supplies.
OK, I'll send you an email and you can email me the letter.
Dude, googleproof that! It could easily be confidential, and even if the mailer was careless, that's no reason to put his correspondence out on the internet. Better yet, redact the whole thing.
secret FISA/admiralty court in the quarterdeck of the USS Constitution.
Hats on or hats off?
The website in question seems pretty hilariously stupid and not-yet-off-the-ground, but it's not obviously a scam.
Followup question: If I run up to the Staten Island Ferry, smash a bottle of seltzer over its prow, and yell "I name this ship the Standpipe Bridgeplate," what then is the name of the ferry?
27: Doonesbury recently had some strips about celebrity GPS voice recordings, which seemed similar.
Mostly I just wanted to complain about the incredible volume of email I get from people who seem to think that all one needs is the surname of one's intended recipient.
I mean, I get some seriously personal stuff. Vacation plans, wedding plans, inquiries after ailing relatives.
28: trick question! All those ferries are already named "The Standpipe Bridgeplate".
30: Much as you hate it, The current XKCD seems relevant, in terms of ways to acquire information about people.
If you don't like it, you should have gotten yourself born into a family with an uncommon name. It worked for me!
I have a gmail acct I almost never use based on a nickname given to me in college by one mr helpy-chalk. There is a woman who, unbelievably, has this as her real name, and who signs up for Wal-Mart mailings at that address and whose children send all their kid pix there. I have written to all of these people explaining, "Oh! Sorry! This is me!" and yet they keep on doing it.
Or created yourself a uniquely hyphenated name upon marriage! That comes with bonus spelling fun.
Ooh, that google thing is indeed annoying. I'd never have known it did that, because I pretty much exclusively use the search bar in my browser.
Which has occasionally been embarrassing when I used my computer in class to show a website and forgot to delete something I had searched for.
Out of boredom, I actually once conducted a brief email romance with a guy in Oklahoma who thought I was "Nancy"[my last name]@ domain.com. Like, I responded to 2 emails in character, saying vaguely encouraging but totally non-committal things to his telling Nancy that he was burning to see her again. Then I got scared and stopped responding, leaving him in the lurch. After three or so increasingly desperate emails, he gave up.
This was pretty clearly evil, I guess.
40: Right up there with gluing caterpillars.
36: Sorry about that! I put a hyphen in my address! It should have been a period =D
34: I've seen that dynamic happen in practice; friends who suddenly found themselves with full remote access to (say) 30,000 PCs and couldn't think of a damn thing to do with that.
what then is the name of the ferry?
But to be serious for a moment: "Matt Weiner".
44: see, I was going to guess "Bryan".
45: No, that's the name of the ferry you can see from the antique cafe upon which Notre Dame casts a long lonely shadow.
Or seriously, neb, wouldn't it be easier to retire the surname-only address, after duly notifying everyone you know who actually uses it?
I mean, I get some seriously personal stuff. Vacation plans, wedding plans, inquiries after ailing relatives.
Meanwhile, the people those e-mails are intended for are puzzled as to why they're getting so many cock photos.
40: You really are a terrible person. A decent person would have arranged to meet the guy and offered to put out.
I have the same problem that Ben describes. The best thing I've gotten was an email from someone at the depar/tment of hom/ela/nd secur/ity telling me that my security clearance had come through and I could start my new job on Monday.
I just now got something about a boat show.
I am in a similar situation to neb, but the extent of the correspondence amounts to quotes for sectionals from a furniture store in Modesto, and assorted reminders to purchase various creams.
Boat shows, pictures, security clearances ... meanwhile I get pictures of sectionals. FML.
I used to get daily Dilbert cartoons intended for my apparent namesake. I fought it for a while - jesus christ, unsubscribe, unsubscribe! Ultimately ditched that email address, though not because of the Dilbert.
I was offered tickets to a comedy festival. I've received concerned correspondence from someone's grandmother. Yesterday, I got someone's password reset email for a service I've never heard of. Just now, I got someone's girlfriend's flight itinerary.
It baffles me. Who doesn't know their own email address?
Wow. I never ever get real emails mistakenly sent to me, at any address. In fact, I can't remember a single time this has happened. I get a lot of Russian spam, but that's about it.
I sent an e-mail to someone whose e-mail address was firstnameinitial-middleinitial-lastname@gmail.com when I meant to send it to someone whose long-held e-mail account is at juno.com.
I get mistaken emails from people with my surname, inviting me to family reunions or sending chain letter prayers.
58.2: It is baffling. The only conceivable explanation I can come up is fairly convoluted: my brother, for example, has had an annoying habit (mostly over now, I think) of changing his email address(es) around in ways that invite error on my part. That is:
Brother: My email address is now FirstnameLastname@[major email provider]
Brother 3 months later: Okay, my email address is now Firstname.Lastname@[another major provider]
5 months later: Right, so my preferred email address is now FirstnameLastname_1@[the first email provider], though the previous one works as well, I just don't check it that often.
Eh. Each of these addresses winds up in my address book, and for a while there, I puzzled over the options from time to time.
That doesn't explain any number of the other wayward emails people are describing.
Lonely Planet once printed my phone number as that of the Greek Embassy. That made for some interesting phone calls.
Oh. I was receiving the Dilbert cartoons because the namesake (Firstinitial_Lastname) was with a provider that had changed its name -- some sort of rebranding thing they went through. So his email address @[original company name] transferred to my identical address @[new company name]. Or something. I imagine he'd long since ditched his old email address.
58.2 I think what happens is that someone has the email address X@Y (for example, Y might be a college) and then they get a new email address (for example, they may have graduated) at Z but X@Z isn't available so they end up with slightly different X'@Z.
For example, I've also got a bunch of the automated emails that google sends out when someone tries to log in as me and says that they've forgotten their password.
I can understand this to some extent, I kept forgetting my login at my old health care website because they didn't have any of my usual usernames available.
My username at my bank is like myusualusername381290, or something. At some point I checked some box on their website so it would remember me, so now when I go there the username box is always filled in as myusu*******. This means I have no idea what my user name is, which has caused problems when I call my bank about various things. "We just need to verify your identity. Can you tell us your user name?" "Um, not really." We go back and forth for a while about why I don't know something so obvious as my user name, then they finally move on to other questions and decide I am me.
And then I deposited five dollars.
66: Heh. I've had a couple of comical phone exchanges like that with my bank. There seems to be a newish thing called a "telephone PIN" -- distinct from your ATM card PIN, to allow you to actually be spoken to on the phone. So, no, I don't know my phone PIN, didn't know I had one. So, uh. A series of follow-up questions I managed to answer after some flailing (which branch did you open your account at? Um, you mean like 15 years ago before you guys bought out the original bank I opened with?), but the most hilarious one was: What kind of account do you have?
Uh, I don't know what you mean ..... I mean, it's a checking account. CORRECT! What can we do for you?
Is anyone else ticked off by Google's latest revamp?
Oh, that was a google thing? I happened to notice it the same day I was "upgraded" to Windows 7 on the work PC and took it as somehow part of the new OS. I'm not very smart, and yes it's annoying.
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... I don't quite see what's necessarily fishy about them, though.
An email from a stranger proposing a financial transaction?
67: I had to call to report a missing/lost ATM card, and they asked me what the amount of my last check was and to whom it was written. Actually, I think they asked about a specific check number.
I found a credit card (a French one) on the ground near a hotel. Thinking it might belog to a guest I called and asked for her. I think I confused her by saying I'd found her VISA on the sidewalk... Then I left it with the front desk at the hotel, whereupon I did not find any dollars.
I found a credit card that said "Discover" on it, which was nice, you know, because it meant I had followed the instructions well. And that just makes a person feel good.
67.last is funny.
You people are old fashioned. It's great.
Spoken by somebody who doesn't routinely search phrases the first half of which may bring up disturbing and/or embarassing results. Ye gods, the first half-dozen searches or so, before I realized I could turn it off, were not fun.
40: Wait a minute, Halford. You were Nancy?
Who doesn't know their own email address?
My dad 'acquired' someone's Facebook account - he'd registered person-from-history at gmail when gmail was new and then ignored it. Some bloke in Texas with an email of person-from-history-spelt-wrongly at gmail joined Facebook and gave them the wrong (i.e. correct) spelling of his email address. So my dad got a welcome email and promptly changed his password.
Speaking of receiving strange emails out of the blue, I recently received an email from the producer of "The View" with a link to a Huffington post article and this note: "Hey B - R U on vaction? Saw this and thought of what we have been discussing vis-a-vis the game show. Appears we are all on the same wave length! R :)" I responded that I had no expertise in game shows but was open to brainstorming. I got no response. I do share the first initial and last name of a tv personality, but if he wanted to know if that person was on vacation he could just turn on the tv. So it must have been some other B he was trying to contact. Alas, I want be producing or starring in any game shows.
I obviously would become a board member but you can just send me 1000 USD and you can take all of the recognition.
Re: the original post, my first thought was to flag the person who persistently mistakes your e-mail address for someone else's as junk mail, which I'm pretty sure would end things from him completely. Don't bother replying first; you've apparently given him enough chances. However, I also like the sound of 11, assuming it wouldn't require giving away personal information or wouldn't seriously hurt someone else. (I got here after the e-mail posted in the comments was redacted so I think I have fewer details than most people.) Causing this unbelievably annoying guy* to have a panicked meeting with lawyers should be actively encouraged, but not if it leads to widows and orphans becoming impoverished or something.
* That's the way he sounds, at least. Repeatedly misdirected e-mails is a minor annoyance. Involving you by accident in someone else's business venture is a more major annoyance. Whatever he's doing is comparable to the GPS celebrity voice recordings idea? Fuck him. The world has too many crazy small businessmen as it is.
I think I need to open a bunch of gmail accounts using common names (if there are any left) to see what comes in.
66: Heh. I've had a couple of comical phone exchanges like that with my bank. There seems to be a newish thing called a "telephone PIN" -- distinct from your ATM card PIN, to allow you to actually be spoken to on the phone. So, no, I don't know my phone PIN, didn't know I had one. So, uh. A series of follow-up questions I managed to answer after some flailing (which branch did you open your account at? Um, you mean like 15 years ago before you guys bought out the original bank I opened with?), but the most hilarious one was: What kind of account do you have?
They go to greater and greater lengths to prevent customers from being able to get any information or talk to anyone. Asking for a number that virtually nobody knows as a prerequisite for simply talking to a human being is fantastic. And then of course all the people IN THE KNOW know that you can just keep pressing zero to talk to a person, though the company never tells you that.
I went to my online account to find out what my "telephone PIN" was. Obviously I had never created one. It wouldn't tell me, but it did ask me if I wanted to change my "telephone PIN" to be the same as my password. I have no idea how that would work since the phone robots ask you to enter "your four-digit telephone PIN".
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Fucking insurance. They're denying a claim - they were billed five times for a procedure back in April, and they're denying all five charges. On the day in question, my paperwork shows like 7 different procedures, all with different costs, none of which match up with the amount they're denying.
They can't tell me what procedure they're denying "because of privacy". Give me a fucking break. The rep was admitted that she could see the description on her computer, but she couldn't tell me which one it was, because she's not a liscensed medical professional.
Is there ever a HIPAA scenario in which you can't disclose to the fucking patient in question administrative information about a procedure that was already completed? If there is, it's only because insurance lobbyists snuck it in.
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That's complete bullshit. Have you tried asking for her supervisor and on up until you get someone who will talk to you?
I hadn't. She kept saying that I should talk with my doctor, and since I have an appointment tomorrow morning, I figured I'd do so.
I'm sure it's not going to help, though. I probably need to get on the phone with the lab work people who actually did the billing. The whole thing is infuriating.
Although, after saying it's bullshit, I have a vague memory that there's some rule about how only a medical person can talk to you about the results of your tests: they can't deliver test results by phone call from an admin. This doesn't cover your situation, and it's still bullshit, but if I'm remembering the rule correctly, I wonder if that's the issue.
Is there ever a HIPAA scenario
As with everything else in life, loads of people who should know the ins and outs of HIPAA know jack all about it.
We've had hospital staff try and deny us access to a murder suspect, saying they can't reveal whether or not the guy (we called the ambulance for, no less) is a patient because it would be a HIPAA violation.
I once worked for a company that had a corporate convention that everyone's email address was firstname_lastname@company.com. Hilarity ensued when they hired another Dave (my lastname) to work in their London office. One of us was david_lastname and the other was dave_lastname, and no one seemed to be able to remember which of us was which.
On Facebook I friended an academic I worked with on a book: he was the editor and I'm a contributor. We're not close, though he was pleasant and helpful (and a good editor to boot); I didn't want to keep pestering him about when the book was coming out and such -- he'd post details on FB and I'd see them there. He has a usefully one-of-a-kind Dutch-American name; he was easy to find via its search engine. He knows my relevant (strange) internet cognomen and accepted being friended.
Except I don't think it's him: it's someone (with the exact same name) who posts one-word entries in Dutch every two or three weeks. Someone actually Dutch, who doesn't know me at all, by any of my internet names. Someone who let himself be friended by someone he didn't know, with a strange internet name.
I've got a nearly one of a kind Dutch American name, and one of the two other people I know of with the same name wants to friend me on Facebook simply because of the name. Maybe it's the same guy.
Both my first name and my last name are so rare that there are groups on Facebook for people with them. The Cyrus group includes a mix of people for whom it's their first name and their last name. No one in it likes Billy Ray or his daughter.