[00:20] <minasota> Omnifrog: nicely played, sir. Btw, are you retired? :)
[00:48] <Omnifrog> nope. I have a "non-traditional" occupation
[00:50] <Omnifrog> [Ubik], I was almost able to cancel the closing meeting of the last house purchasing email non-sense
[00:52] <Omnifrog> I repeatedly replied to the Realtor that they had the wrong email address. They didn't ever take any action
[00:52] <Omnifrog> finally on the night before closing I told em... you know what? fuck it. I don't want the house
[00:53] <Omnifrog> cancel everything
[00:53] <Omnifrog> never heard back from them again
[01:04] <minasota> Is it concerning to you that, your email is associated with all this?
[01:06] <minasota> I can understand fat fingering a key or two and getting the wrong email addr but, you seem to be associated with a lot of potential home buyers :)
[01:11] <Omnifrog> I get a lot of OOPs mail
[01:12] <Omnifrog> but they are all due to people that share my exact first/last name
[01:12] <Omnifrog> I get monthly car insurance statements
[01:13] <Omnifrog> once I even took over a guys domain names and hosting provider
[01:13] <minasota> What goes around, comes around...
[01:14] <Omnifrog> the "forgot password" link allowed me to figure out whats going on
[01:14] <Omnifrog> oh, I'm not a dick
[01:14] <Omnifrog> I thought at first that it was someone trying to take over MY domains
[01:15] <Omnifrog> the email said my domains were about to expire and that I needed to "click here"
[01:16] <Omnifrog> so I copied the URL and edited it to get to the sites home page
[01:17] <Omnifrog> tried to log in, and "recovered lost password"
[01:17] <Omnifrog> once I was in I found the guys contact info
[01:17] <Omnifrog> that was a weird as fuck phone call
[01:18] <Omnifrog> hi, is this [my name]?
[01:18] <Omnifrog> yes
[01:18] <Omnifrog> ah, well hi, this is [my name]
[01:19] <Omnifrog> funny thing happened today
[01:19] <Omnifrog> lol
[01:20] <Omnifrog> of course I gave him all the info to regain control of his accounts
[01:20] <Omnifrog> the problem is gmail
[01:21] <Omnifrog> and how it handles dots
[01:21] <Omnifrog> "."
[01:22] <Omnifrog> joe.blow is the same to gmail servers as joeblow
[01:23] <Omnifrog> also the same as joe..blow
[01:26] <Omnifrog> so all the joe.m.blow's who mistype and leave out the middle initial get redirected to the earliest created joeblow/joe.blow account
[01:27] <minasota> but not the same as joe<dot>blow
[01:27] <Omnifrog> are < allowed in user names ?
[01:28] <minasota> no
[01:29] <Omnifrog> I'm not really worried about it
[01:29] <minasota> but if you ever publish your email, using "dot" instead of "." helps.
[01:29] <Omnifrog> I'm a good person. I wont ever screw anyone over
[01:30] <Omnifrog> I will have fun with it every now and then though
[01:31] <Omnifrog> trying to explain situations like this to people on the phone is REALLY weird though
[01:32] <Omnifrog> they see you as a con and a threat from the very start
[01:32] <Omnifrog> even if all you are doing is trying to help them
[01:33] <minasota> Just take care of it behind the scenes. Secure what you find is vulnerable and move along ;)
[01:33] <Omnifrog> but how do you do that if you are already in
[01:34] <Omnifrog> thinking you are looking into a threat to yourself
[01:35] <Omnifrog> when I clicked "forgot password" I just wanted to see what happened
[01:35] <Omnifrog> but it changed the password in the process
[01:35] <Omnifrog> so now I was the only one with the password to his account
[01:36] <Omnifrog> I had no choice but to contact him
[01:38] <minasota> Maybe next time don't go so far? Contact the service and explain what you found and let them handle it?
[01:38] <Omnifrog> call tech support?
[01:39] <Omnifrog> where I would have to authenticate my identity
[01:39] <Omnifrog> ...
[01:39] <Omnifrog> >.>
[01:39] <minasota> For all they know, you were trying to gain access, got scared and tried to cover yourself by saying "I was only trying to help" You know what I mean?
[01:40] <Omnifrog> by leaving them out of it I fixed the problem with no wait time litening to musak
[01:41] <Omnifrog> convincing the hosting company would be a lot harder than convincing the owner
[01:41] <minasota> Not your problem... Busybody :P
[01:42] <Omnifrog> keep in mind, I wasnt trying to take over someones domain
[01:42] <Omnifrog> I was trying to figure out who was trying to take over MINE!
[01:43] <Omnifrog> I didn't know what was really up until I was already in control of the account
[01:44] <Omnifrog> by that point I was like... of shit
[01:44] <Omnifrog> oh*
[01:44] <minasota> Secure your side of the street... Forget about "who" is doing what to you. Hell, man you could spend all day chasing down "who" is trying to get into your stuff
[01:44] <Omnifrog> also, if I had just deleted the email his domains would have expired
[01:46] <Omnifrog> 30 days later his sites would have been deleted
[01:47] <minasota> Not likely. Sounds like you got targeted, just saying
[01:47] <Omnifrog> targeted ?
[01:47] <Omnifrog> by an email typo?
[01:47] <minasota> It most likely wasn't a typo
[01:48] <Omnifrog> I don't understand
[01:49] <minasota> Ok, say you have an account with some <whatever service>. They send you reminders, alerts etc right?
[01:49] <Omnifrog> yeah
[01:51] <minasota> Those are automatic, your email doesn't change, you follow? So what is the likely hood that the <service above> suddenly sends the routine reminder, alert etc to the wrong email address?
[01:52] <minasota> Rare
[01:53] <Omnifrog> I really was able to log into the hosting provider though
[01:53] <Omnifrog> and the persol info on the account was real
[01:53] <Omnifrog> and the persons web site actually existed
[01:53] <Omnifrog> I checked
[01:54] <minasota> I understand... I don't think I'm explaining this well
[01:54] <Omnifrog> and whois confirmed it
[01:54] <minasota> The email that was sent to you was not a mistake
[01:54] <minasota> It was not an error
[01:55] <Omnifrog> err...
[01:55] <minasota> It wasn't intended for someone else and ended up in your inbox because of username similarities
[01:56] <Omnifrog> ...ok
[01:57] <Omnifrog> I agree that it was misdirected email
[01:57] <minasota> It was an INTENTIONAL misdirected email...
[01:58] <Omnifrog> how so?
[01:58] <Omnifrog> and why?
[01:58] <Omnifrog> to what end?
[01:59] <minasota> I explained it above. Think about it. Anyway, I'm off to bed. Have a good night Omnifrog
[01:59] <Omnifrog> ok, sleep well minasota