Plenty of traffic and questions recently, so I figure I will answer them here.

Why did I buy the domain donotreply.com?
No malicious intent at all. Back in 2000, I was buying “wacky” domains for a new mail service -evilemail.com. Those were wacky, crazy bubble days. When you are buying domains like BettyWhiteIsHot.com, Chlamydia-is-not-a-flower.com, and DaddySaysIFrenchKissTheBest.com, DoNotReply.com seems reasonable in comparison. It was meant as a joke, nothing more.

Why did you turn on the catch-all and post the messages?
Our original mail server died under the weight of the messages. Even bouncing emails gets expensive. I was trying to figure out what was going on.

Why don’t you bounce them back?
One reason, because the domain is also used by spammers. So I would just be compounding the problem of spam by bouncing the mail back. We did this back in the day and got blacklisted as a spammer/bad mail server.

Why not contact the people?
I tried that. I spent plenty of time and money only to be accused of this or that, mainly that and that being hacking their mail server.

Is this extortion?
While discussing the issue of a blog post with a lawyer from a fortune 500 company, he asked to compensate me for my time. I was uncomfortable with that so we agreed on a mutual charity, the local pound. The tradition was born.

You actually don’t have to do anything but contact me and I will take it down. The donation is more of a suggestion. Anyone who has contacted me can tell you this is true, I am changing the wording to reflect that.

They are allowed to be removed because I believe people can change, correct their mistakes and learn from these lessons.

Hey you make money off of this!
The adsense on these pages was a habit, not a thought out one . In the life of this site it has made about $500. I have contacted this charity (Cap)about donating that money to them. If all is well, I will donate the money. If there is an issue with that organization, I am open to suggestions (removed adsense to avoid people clicking to help a charity).

Why post them?
Because companies pay lip-service to security and privacy. Most of the companies listed here are giant corporations who should know better, who should have better policies in place. Some even offer services to you for if your credit cards or identity is stolen, yet they aren’t proactive about stopping that from happening.
The problem is, companies don’t always hire the right person for system administration jobs. Look at the horror stories over at thedailywtf. The position of system administrator is often left to hiring someone’s family member who is “good with computers”. It is a job that demands technical excellence, a system admin is not the janitor of the future, stop treating the position like it is. It is a hard job that needs smart people.

And remember, if they are willing to be this careless with your information, where else are they careless? This is a minor, almost silly thing, what happens when it comes to things that are hard? That are expensive? I don’t trust them, do you?

Why don’t you just list all the emails like other sites do?
That was my original thought. But then I read some. Too many contain people’s private information. Innocent people would be hurt by the posting of all the emails.

Don’t you have better things to do with your time?
Like what? Email some guy who posts emails and complain to him he should find something better to do with his life?