It's not hard. I promise. And really, if you can't manage this, you shouldn't be on the web. It's a dangerous place. Full of scams and spam; viruses and Trojan Horses - that's right little Greeks will escape from your computer and attack you with canned pig meat and breath diseases on you while trying to sell you snake oil cures. It is far from safe.
I have discovered, in recent years, people are having a hard time with this simple concept. As an early adopter of Gmail (back when you needed an invite - ohhh! how exclusive!) I got a really good email address with no funny words or extra numbers, just a regular email, old school style. Life was good.
Then, in last few years, I started getting emails. People giving their friends my email. I got invites to frat parties and Christmas letters and updates on families I don't know (but might be related distantly to). Then I started getting pictures from cell phones, babies in car seats, pastrami sandwiches. People are weird. Then Richard Reilly struck. He is the bane of my existence. He gave my name to the Apple store where he lives, in TX and whenever he makes a purchase, I get his receipt. Then he took a flight and booked a rental car in Vegas. And I got the flight itinerary and reservation information. Then he sent Christmas presents from Harry and David to his mother and his friends. I got that order info as well. By the way, Rob's mom, he sends you less then his friends. Bad Son. Then he purchased land and the lawyer sent documents to me - YAY! I wrote to the lawyer and ask him to tell Rob to stop using my email!!! It didn't work. He signs up for golf sites and espn and keeps placing online orders. I have gotten email for Robert Reilly, Rita Reilly and Rebecca Reilly (who used my email to sign up for linked-in, which then mail bombed me with all her new linked-in network buddies! Hurray!) and a woman named Nora who was emailing some R Reilly or other and then got mad at me for 'getting on to her stuff' it took me two emails to explain to her that she had a wrong email. Two. It's just not right. Something has to be done.
I think there should be a test before you are allowed on the world wide web. This test should verify that you know your own name, where you live, and the current day month and year. When you pass this test, you will get limited access to the web - you will be allowed to select one of the numerous web mail providers (hotmail, aol, gmail, yahoo mail, etc.) as your primary web mail provider. Anyone who picks AOL will fail the test. Next, the test will ask you to provide the email address you just created. It will send an email to that address and prompt you to log back in to your email and click the link. The link will enable your access to the web. If you can't create an email account, or can't log back in, or don't get the email (aka you created an email account and can't remember it just 2 minutes later) then you will fail the test and not be allowed on the web. If this rule existed I would be SO happy because, apparently, an unfortunate number of R Reillys would fail this test. I would also be a little sad because, apparently, an unfortunate number of R Reillys would fail this test.
However, the people are not only culprits in this crime against my email account. People entering wrong email addresses is not a rare problem. It is not uncommon. Any engineer worth his/her salt, should know how to design a site that verifies an email address provided by a user before using it to spam an email account into oblivion or before sending clear text passwords out. In my ideal world wide web, any sites that do not properly verify email addresses would be listed on a Site Of Shame and people would be allowed, no, encouraged, to hack their pages regularly, without fear of prosecution. Linked-In you would be on that list. And so would you, small golf club website that Richard Reilly joined. Richard, you should change your password.
However, this will never happen, but still I hold out hope. The word in the tech world is that new 'closed' technologies like the iPad are going to change everything. Some say this will wreck the world wide web, privatizing the internet and destroying the freedom that has been created. But I do not hold with these doomsday-ers, if most of the people start using apps and stop using the web then engineers can take over again. That's right, one day engineers will rise up - well, at least out wait - and will once again rule the web and they will post interesting articles. Stephen Hawking and Tautology will be top Google searches. Best of all, no one will think my email address is theirs!
