17 Comments

  3. Unknown's avatar

    Here, here!

    It would be nice to see a comment from his “doppelganger” (I guess), Idiot Bill Bickle. The guy who kept giving people Bill’s email address as if it was his own.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Unknown's avatar

    RobW: I can’t provide an update on Idiot Bill, but I can on Idiot phsiii.

    I think I mentioned this here before.

    I’ve had phsiii@gmail since the Gmail Beta, because I’ve used “…phsiii” as my sig since 1980 (actually before that: I have a rubber stamp somewhere). This came about because my sister was in art college in the mid-70s and one of their assignments was to come up with a personal logo. Her name is Thea (well, Dorothea) and she took a theta as her logo, and that prompted me to come up with mine. (ObAnecdote: In the BITNET era, my sig broke the Columbia mailer, because used inline commands starting with a period, but not starting with MULTIPLE periods. Quickly and easily fixed, but still makes me snicker.)

    Anyway, over a decade ago, I started getting a LOT of email sent to that address that wasn’t really spam: that is, it was legit email from sites that you had to sign up for (it started with the NRA), but I sure hadn’t signed up. I save all my spam and do annual quick analysis on it, looking for heavy hitters (admin@akphs, webmaster@, etc.) so I can blackhole those. I set up a keystroke to move notes from “Idiot phsiii”, as I dubbed him based on Bill’s monicker for his doppelganger, to a separate folder instead of just to saved spam.

    After a while I looked into that archive and could see a number that included the guy’s name: he is indeed a PHS the third. But searching for other email for him was unsuccessful. I might could phone him but just couldn’t be arsed to do so, and figured it would be a weird conversation, better done via email anyway.

    I’ve amassed a reasonable amount of PII on him from the notes: I know what he drives (including at least one VIN), where his wife went to college, his blood type, etc. At one point he signed up for some courses using phsiii, and was getting plaintive “Fill out this form before the class” notes; I took pity on him and sent the admin a note explaining and suggesting that they tell the guy this isn’t his email, but that didn’t help.

    It mostly trailed off after 2023 or so. The NRA notes were the worst: of 4500-odd saved, about 900 are from them, and they’re all from different lists that require individual unsubscribes, but maybe he figured that one out, because those stopped. Another 600 are from the Red Cross.

    Last week I got a new one addressed to him by name. I looked again for another email for him, didn’t find one, but then had an idea I should have thought of earlier: I know his wife’s name, and also that they moved from GA to CO a few years ago. Searching located her work email, including a short bio that said she had moved there from GA, so I emailed her a cheerful “Hey, if you’re who I think you are, your husband has been using my email and he might want to stop”. She replied cheerfully asking if I could forward the notes; I said sure, I could upload a .PST somewhere (65MB!), but meanwhile, here’s a list of all the unique senders AND the unique domains, in case that helped. I figured they might want to log onto those sites and update the email.

    The next response was an angry note from him saying he had never used my email and that this was MY problem not his and to “F off”! I did reply noting that if he hadn’t been doing it, how would I have found him? And quoting a number of the specific items that identified him (cars, the course, etc.). No response since, so **** him indeed. I’m resisting the urge to update my keystroke to also send him a copy. Or to write a macro to forward all 4500 notes individually…

    People!

    P.S. His email turns out to be phsiiinn@gmail.com. Tricky.

    Like

  7. Unknown's avatar

    phsiii: I’ve had a similar problem for a while, although in nowhere near the volume that you’ve been dealing with. I’ve had my mac.com address since ’86, and there’s a small but steady stream of crap. Most recently there’s an appointment scheduler system for household service contractors based in Denver that sends me 4-5 appointment confirmations a day for people who are apparently expecting someone to show up and do work on their house. I’ve tried emailing them but nothing happens.

    I recommend that your go ahead and update your keystroke to send him all the copies. Yes, it’s petty, but it’s also good for a chuckle.

    Like

  8. Unknown's avatar

    pshiii: You seem to be an amazing online detective. … If his wife was that understanding about it all, and assuming she broached it to him in a similar fashion, I don’t understand why he was so antagonistic to you. In his shoes, I think I would be grateful to you for your persistence in solving a problem that has to affect both of you.

    Like

  9. Unknown's avatar

    Boise Ed/billr: Well, yeah, I thought they should be grateful, too. But as I said, People!!! Ya cain’t fix ’em and ya cain’t kill ’em (well, you’re not supposed to, anyway).

    I’ve decided not to be petty about it, in part because I do value my phsiii email (see comment below) and don’t want him spambombing it in response, though I doubt he’s that sophisticated. A friend also points out that he’s an NRA member, and that address is not exactly cloaked, so I am physically findable
    …but it’s still tempting.

    I’ve staked out the phsiii handle pretty well everywhere (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., even if I don’t really use a given platform), and have used it professionally for 46 years. I’ve met people in my end of IT who go “Oh, you’re phsiii!” It was a personal branding move that I did more or less by accident–I had no idea about such a thing until years later, but it’s proven useful.

    And now I sorta feel like I’ve hijacked this thread; apologies!

    Like

  10. Unknown's avatar

    No apologies needed. It was interesting. And your “Oh, you’re phsiii!” reminded me of a dinner of FrameMaker users, in 1977, where a bunch of us had that same “Oh, you’re Ed” (or whoever). It was a memorable dinner, because I met my wife-to-be there.

    Like

  13. Unknown's avatar

    Yep, I used Frame a lot. Once it got stable I didn’t hate it, though my fingers are mostly trained to Word so it tended to irritate me!

    Like

  15. Unknown's avatar

    I have an old Hotmail address, from the very early days so it’s just a first name and last initial. Some guy used it for his Bell Canada account. So I get reminders and notifications that his bill is behind, etc. I played around a bit, and I believe I could reset his password, since I know his account name. I wouldn’t. I also know his cell number, and texted him once, but he didn’t respond.

    Liked by 1 person

Add a Comment