I'm sure he was inundated with people wanting to buy it, license it, claim the made it, asking for tips, etc. I'd imagine this kind of thing basically ruins your email address.
Then when he said he didn't like the attention, more hate came. Then when he said he was pulling it, death threats came.
Reminds me of people who win the lottery. All their friends just want something, charities start bugging them, they can't be left alone.
Yeah a few of my friends told me about that. Sent him a message, but still haven't heard back. He's offering $$$, but it still feels spammy and annoying. :-/ Hope nobody was annoyed.
He talked about himself for 20 or 30 minutes before I got a word in.
He had a couple of ideas at the time, some about charitable giving, and others were about fighting spam with the technique of charging strangers to receive their email. (This is such an oft-repeated idea it's listed in the "You Might Be An Anti-Spam Kook" page). I told him that there were a few things wrong with his approach, and he clapped his hand on my shoulder and said that he could just get someone else to do this.
Overall I felt a bit sorry for him. He was a pretty interesting guy who had great talents and great ambitions. He wasn't limited by a lack of confidence. Unfortunately he has had a lot of early validation that he was a genius, and such overconfidence can be just as crippling.
it seemed to be part of some larger 'communication and marketing' package he was subscribed to. I was getting monthly email updates, etc - ghostwritten by someone else. It wasn't bad, but video responses to everything was annoying. It felt like he was intentionally trying to hide something.
I felt pretty bad for the target. Even though he was fairly warned, and knew to expect social engineering attacks, you could see he was quite excited about the potential opportunity at X co; else he wouldn't have put so much energy into that looong email exchange. Poor, guy. But good lesson, I suppose.
It's unfortunate, but he's not actually trying to scam anyone. He truly believes that he invented email. Furthermore, he has become paranoid in the belief that there is a huge conspiracy to discredit him.
I felt like I had won something when he got so sick of me telling the truth on Twitter that he blocked me.
He did not invent email as we know it today. He copywrited a term that described something people had already been doing for many years. That is not invention.
I see his gripe with it. There's nothing more irritating then seeing a whole bunch of spam comments on one of your sites. The worst is the compliment spam that is so hard to filter.
But what it's taught me is to be a better developer, and to learn new anti spam techniques. I feel bad because the site probably meant a lot to her. He should have helped her out more.
I agree. I was thinking of spam in a generic sense. He had to have generated a bunch of these and bulk mailed them or else he would have taken the time to customize them.
What he received by email was spam, plain and simple.
And the despicable way they handle signups speaks for itself. I would never have gotten as far as he did because I know that anyone who does that is scamming me. There's no other reason to do it. If people actually liked the service, they wouldn't need to twist your arm to get you to sign up.
It was odd that they came back telling him used books sales was crowdfunding. They seemed to get that wrong. After that it was a bunch of useless corporate spam emails of the like you get from an App Store review or similar.
Apparently they have IRC logs of him first talking about selling the information to spammers or using it to go phishing, which makes it a little worse.
Then when he said he didn't like the attention, more hate came. Then when he said he was pulling it, death threats came.
Reminds me of people who win the lottery. All their friends just want something, charities start bugging them, they can't be left alone.
I feel sorry for him.
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