Now THIS is a story.
Disclaimer: The following actually happened, and has not had details changed, or added. It may sound like a total joke, but his has been ongoing until today, from maybe two weeks ago. Enjoy.
So about two weeks ago this guy added me to MSN. His email is abortion@iblamegod.com. As far as emails go, it’s pretty funny, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. We started talking, and he said something along the lines of “Gawd, dreamhost sucks”. This was right at a time where DreamHost was great to me, and they still are. So I told him that they’re pretty good and if it’s a speed problem, they’ll switch his server no problem. To which I got this: He told me that he is Zach, the son of Dallas, the co-owner and CEO of DreamHost.
Of course, I don’t believe him. I mean, you can’t say you’re someone like that without having proof, right? He then tells me that I am going to work with him. Doing PHP coding for free. The site? Emoranger.co.uk. He wants it to be a tutorial site. Nice name.
After this, I got him going for at least half an hour on trying to prove who he really is. Now as some background information, DreamHost is located in California. Therefore his time should be two-three hours behind me, so I asked him what time it was. After hesitation, he got the right answer. He probably used the same website that I did.
All along, I kinda had the hunch that this guy was British. He was always leaving early, or going to bed as I though… Britain is 5 hours ahead of me. He let some things slip over out conversations however.
- He said that he was watching telly. Is there a more British word than telly? I doubt it.
- He told me he was taking his Mom out for Mother’s Day. Nice guy, right? Too bad Mother’s Day in North America is in May… But that day it was British/European Mother’s Day. Nice one
This was March 18th. Not the second Sunday of May like most of the world…
There was one other… I forget >.<
I talk to a lot of people from England everyday. For some reason it just works out like that, but I know the slang and stuff, but I can pretty much tell when I’m talking to an American vs. an English person and this guy was sure not American.
So I start accusing him of all this stuff, and I was getting pretty nasty. I was really trying to get to the bottom of this guy. I’ve never gotten him to really admit anything to his identity, but earlier today he signed on the MSN and we had a nice convo. He also spilled some great details about DreamHost.
He signed on today to tell me that he ‘worked out’ my request. I told him to send me an email from his Dad’s account, or from his own @dreamhost.com email. Well, he managed to do that.
To: connor61rs@hotmail.com
From: dallas.kashuba@dreamhost.com
Subject: Told you So!
Pretty nice, if you ask me. This means this guy is either for real or very talented at persuading people to do things or compromising email accounts. So more background info, this guy is 16 apparently, and Dallas Kashuba is around 38-39 apparently. It’s viable but still fishy. Now this is where the MSN window that I have left open for this post’s purpose comes into play. I’ll be direct quoting here.
Zach - says:
there e-mail will arive soon just logged on and sent it
Zach - says:
there i have sent you the e-mail
Connor says:
alright, so now I still don’t deblieve you and I’m still not going to work for free
Connor says:
just because you’re daddy’s little girl doenst mean someone will just hand over time and work
Zach - says:
I told you i have the rights to dreamhost.com
Zach - says:
So now i have passed ya little test
Connor says:
err, you’re like 15, and you have no rights to dreamhost.com… if you are the person you say you are, you’ll inherit it. untill then…
So he’s basically all happy that he passed my little test. It’s believable it this point.
BUT!
But what? He dropped a nice bomb right after. This continues directly after the last one ends.
Connor says:
and its employee owned,
Zach - says:
it’s not employee owned lol
Zach - says:
That’s just an advertisment technique to make it more friendly lol
Connor says:
oh really?
Zach - says:
I allready own it lol seeming i have allready inherited it from birth
Connor says:
mhm mhm
Connor says:
you inherited a compnay from birth
Connor says:
ceo right out of thw womb?
Zach - says:
I have nothing more to proof to you
Zach - says:
You could put it that way that it is ming from birth i have full rights at 18 but untill than i own a large percentage my dad has the rest
Zach - says:
so yes it is my company and im rich rich rich
Yikes, thats a long one, but it is indeed exactly what we both said, typos and all. Right after that I told him I was going to blog this, and he got a little defensive. Saying stuff like “no one will believe you”, “how do they know you didn’t just type that”, etc…
Well besides the entire back story above, and the fact that I am a horrible creative writer in terms of stories, and the direct MSN convo quotes, I’d say it’s pretty solid. My favourite thing to come out of this though is definitely that DreamHost is not actually Employee Owned. If that’s true, it could be pretty bad for them. That’s total lies for a long time! Here’s what happened right after the last quote, in MSN:
Connor says:
man i should totally blog this
Connor says:
post it around 9rules, etc… this could be good
Connor says:
http://www.techtuts.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3095&st=0&#entry21078 rofl
Zach - says:
People will not believe you
Connor says:
why won’t they believe me? I’ll quote this convo
Zach - says:
your just a joke it’s all a mind game
Connor says:
we’ll see
Zach - says:
how can you proof you just did not type it lol
Connor says:
i guess we’ll see
Connor says:
if people believe me or not its not up to me or you
Connor says:
but the story… pure gold
Zach - says:
pure gold or just a laugh and make you a mocking laugh ha ha ha
Connor says:
i’ll probably get a comment from Dallas saying “Son… I don’t have a son!”
Zach - says:
of course he would say that it’s none of your buisness lol also you won’t get any comment because you will be a laughing stock
Zach - says:
good bye
Connor says:
later, come back in an hour or so to read my story
Connor says:
I wont even extrude the details
Zach - says:
So this account will no longer exsit good bye
Connor says:
lol i could get hosted within the hour
Connor says:
and thers 9 minutes left in the hour
Connor says:
and it woul just add to the story. and THAT would prove you’re real
Connor says:
and just make it worse for you and DH
There’s him getting defensive, and threatening to close my account. Hah.
So I’ll leave this open to interpretation, but I still have one more thing. This guy’s domain that he wanted me to totally develop front and back end for free, emoranger.co.uk, it’s owned by a guy named Mark Thompson. This guy would’ve been more believable if he could cover his tracks better…
Leave a comment
brian
April 7th, 2007 at 6:54 PM
Yes… this guy is either for real or very talented at persuading people to do things or compromising email accounts… or he knows how to change the reply-to header in an e-mail… dip shit.
Connor Wilson
April 7th, 2007 at 7:01 PM
Yeah that makes sense lol
I guess his plan of me not thinking of that worked out for a little bit. That would also explain why the email only read “Content:”.
Thanks, despite the dipshit part.
Tyler
April 7th, 2007 at 7:04 PM
Yeah, tell me who you would like an email from and I’ll send it to you.
Its not hard to spoof an email.
Scott
April 7th, 2007 at 9:48 PM
you’re right, this story is pure gold, pretty much the funniest part of today for me
Julian Bennett Holmes
April 8th, 2007 at 2:20 AM
That’s a pretty good story. This Zach guy is funny.
Tony
April 8th, 2007 at 2:22 AM
As it was pointed out, email headers are added at client-side. Having him read something you send to @dreamhost.com is another story
Btw, getting a hold of his IP (server access logs are the simplest, there are ways to actually get it from MSN packets as well) would quickly pinpoint him down to a city.
Josh Buckley
April 8th, 2007 at 9:27 AM
If he was from California, why would his site be .co.uk?
Alex Mould
April 8th, 2007 at 9:39 AM
Thats funny, glad you caught him out..
Connor Wilson
April 8th, 2007 at 10:02 AM
He’s pretty much given him self up. No matter how he can say “.com wasn’t available”, “my mom is British”, etc… He couldn;t cover his track well enough.
What a loser, eh? He went through all this for nothing
CK
April 11th, 2007 at 5:00 AM
*Rolly-eyes emoticon*
I wish I had an idiot hound me in order to keep me mildly entertained throughout the evening hours. Have you heard from this fool since?
Connor Wilson
April 11th, 2007 at 7:51 AM
Yeah, actually. He sent another email from abuse@dreamhost.com. The first of the two only read “Content:”, aka he forget to change that header, but the second one was this:
Mike Frisco
April 21st, 2007 at 3:11 PM
Dallas does not have any children.
Connor Wilson
April 21st, 2007 at 3:14 PM
Thanks for the confirmation, Mike. That was the first question that popped into my head in the first place
Jd P
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:30 PM
haha, this was a laugh. Poor kid. Does dreamhost really switch your server if you are having speed troubles?
Connor Wilson
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:38 PM
Yep, just ask.
jane
June 26th, 2007 at 2:25 PM
dallas’ last name isn’t even kashuba. so maybe he is the son of dallas kashuba, whoever the fcuk that is.
atomicrabbit
June 27th, 2007 at 12:42 PM
as someone else pointed out, you can easily spoof an email from any email address you can think of (existing or not) using some simple php code.
Zack
July 31st, 2007 at 2:50 PM
My father has disowned me now.
*Sad Panda*
I have figured out I suck at Social Engineering, and will improve my skills before taking over the world. Next, I will be Josh’s long lost son and ask random people on the interwebs for skittles.
Seguro Automovel
July 19th, 2008 at 8:35 AM
Thats some funny stuff! That email is just silly! I would have been on guard if I had someone talking to me on MSN with that email!
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