Sponsor's Message

For those unfamiliar with the term, a "catchall" mailbox will accept emails addressed to name @thedomain. All incoming email is then dumped into a single mailbox where it can be downloaded and read.

Since, in my case, the domain name in question is not being actively used and I've never actually advertised or sent email from any address associated with it, there should be no messages arriving in that mailbox

But there are -- and they're not spam.

It appears that someone thinks they have an address at my domain, or one very similar, and on a semi-regular basis, I receive email that is obviously not intended for me.

A lot of this email seems to involve public relations activities and I have to admit, makes interesting reading.

When I first started receiving these errant emails, I diligently responded to each of the senders, advising them that they'd addressed the message incorrectly and that they'd best resend to the correct one.

After a while, this got rather tiresome -- especially when many of those emails were several megabytes in size due to large attachments.

I contemplated turning off the email for that site -- but then thought "why should I? It's my domain!".

Well the emails keep coming, today's rather dose espousing how successfully a particular product had been "placed" in a highly rating NZ-produced TV drama series.

Of course I can't disclose any details because the email contains one of those long "This email contains confidential information..." footnotes that threatens to have me castrated and all my children sold into slavery if I breathe a word -- oops, too late!

The footnote also requests that I "delete the message and any attachment and advise us immediately that it has been received in error".

Sorry folks -- I tried that dozens of times already but the email keeps coming.

I wonder what the legal situation is here?

If you advise a sender or recipient that they've got the address wrong, and they keep sending "confidential" emails to that same incorrect mailbox, can you still be bound by such a clause?

Do such clauses carry any weight in the first place? Surely there's a duty of care associated with the sending of email which says that if, after being advised that the wrong address is being used, you continue to send "confidential" information to someone, they can't be held responsible for what happens to it.

And how long before I can start billing them for the time associated with downloading and deleting this dross?

Yes, the simple solution would be to stop using a catchall mailbox for this domain but why should I have to change my setup just because someone else is a lazy idiot?

And Colyn, if you're reading this -- please give Jody your proper email address!

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