Make Some Money with... Email Parking!

[deleted984054565403]

From http://marco-za.blogspot.com/2007/09/email-parking.html

Typos in domain names are common tricks used by phishers as well as advertisers to take advantage of users misspelling popular domain names. It's often referred to as domain parking. There's a lot being done to tackle this, from new laws to anti-phishing techniques and the lot.

Something occurred to me recently that made me wonder whether this happens with email addresses at all? Email addresses are often a lot more complicated than domain names. Just think about how often people's names are misspelled. What if someone took a popular email address and registered a common misspelling? What if the contents of an email sent to that incorrect address were confidential? The consequences could be devastating!

This might appear cumbersome, but let me first describe what occurred to me. My Gmail address includes my surname, Gallotta, which is often often misspelled (Galotta, Gallota, etc.). So a few months ago I signed up for various misspellings and set them up to forward to the correct address. By chance I recognised that a recent, very important email was sent to one of these addresses. After noticing, I did a quick search and discovered that a fair number were sent to these misspelled addresses! So this was certainly not a once-off occasion. Even people I communicate with regularly made this mistake.

If I had not set signed up for those accounts it could well have caused a few problems! It wasn't confidential (my response was though!), but what if it was and someone else knew that I was receiving confidential information they wanted to get hold of? What if he had registered the misspelled address himself? Disaster!!

Are their any solutions? Ignoring the case of free email services such as Gmail for a moment, the domain name is the most critical. If the users section of the address is misspelled (the part before the @) then it will stay within the domain and in most cases the damage caused will be negligible. So if the control over registering domains similar to major domains then a large part of the problem will be solved.

For free email services such as Gmail, you could do what I did and register the addresses with possible typos. You won't catch everything and if the address is already taken by someone else there is nothing you can do about it. You might say people shouldn't be sending confidential information over free email services. While this is true to some extent, there are varying levels of confidentiality. Even personal emails can be considered confidential and we don't want to restrict everyone from using such wonderful services. Someone might even do it as a joke and it could end up providing him with emails you would absolutely not want to let him read.

I think this is an issue that deserves further attention. If it has received attention then it sure hasn't been enough as I've never heard of any solutions to this before.

---

Interesting...

 

[cassius]

Check this out:

This led directly to the resignation of a United States District Attorney

http://2004.georgewbush.org/deadletteroffice/

And this sort of thing has been going on for a while (although I think it is fairly unscrupulous).

 

[AdoptableDomains]

Rule #1
Don't send confidential information by email. Think of email like a picture postcard. If you wouldn't send the information on a postcard that anyone handling it could see, then don't do it by email without encryption. Or zip a text message in an encrypted document and send as an attachment...or send a link to a secure website to access the message. Encryption is sort of like taking the postcard and putting it in a sealed envelope.

This is a good reason not to register a name similar to your direct competition. Imagine [email protected] accidentally gets mail meant for [email protected]. Another example is registering something generic like [email protected] and possibly getting mail meant for [email protected]

To add another twist, what if you registered popular typos and set autoreplies of spam to the accounts. The original sender may not even notice the person they sent to wasn't the one who replied with the spam or scam.

More reasons to get domains similar to the one you value.

Also, last I read it was against Gmail TOS to have multiple email accounts.

 

[shockie]

never thought about this... from the sounds of it, this could be a major source of security leaks and poses a greater threat to a company than just "stealing traffic". this is probably why you see those footers at the end of company emails saying "blahblah if this was meant for you then you have to delete it, etc".