How Thousands of Misplaced Emails Took Over This Engineer's Inbox

Minimalist · Jun 25, 2020

Two weeks ago, longtime software engineer Kenton Varda got an email that wasn't meant for him. It was from AT&T Mexico to a customer named Jorge, whose most recent phone bill was attached. You've probably gotten an email intended for someone else at least once. But then Varda got another AT&T Mexico bill for Gloria. And then a third for Humberto, who is overdue on paying more than 6,200 pesos, about $275.

To Varda, the incident wasn't a surprise. As the owner of the email account temporal@gmail.com, he gets dozens of messages a day from Spanish-speakers around the world, all sent by people who thought they could use his address as a dummy input: "Temporal" translates to "temporary." Varda says he frequently receives private documents, even medical bills and collection notices. Many of the most sensitive emails contain legal notices that the messages are confidential and should not be disclosed to other parties aside from the intended recipient. Varda doesn't speak Spanish, but he uses Google Translate when possible to understand what's going on and reply to senders saying they have the wrong address.
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https://www.wired.com/story/misplaced-emails-took-over-inbox-temporal/

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How Thousands of Misplaced Emails Took Over This Engineer's Inbox

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How Thousands of Misplaced Emails Took Over This Engineer's Inbox

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