ihavebeenfloated

I’m browsing the net yesterday, surfing del.icio.us and all that, and I come across Mailer 1.0. (Link no longer works.) For those who missed it, it was a tool some college student made to demonstrate to his college how easy it is for people to spoof emails. He put it up online so that people like me could have fun with it.

Thinking it was harmless enough, I fired off an email to a friend of mine from the email address fthompson@riaa.com (Or something like that, I did it all so quickly that I don’t really remember the name I used). In a slightly formal tongue I wrote out something again to this:

We at the RIAA are aware that you are privately trading MP3 files through Direct Connect hubs using a client such as BCDC++ or DC++. We received your address and other personal information by tracking your IP address to your ISP. The local authorities will be at your house in two days to confiscate any computers present. – Frank Thomspson, RIAA, fthompson@riaa.com

I thought it was a little funny, and I certainly didn’t expect my friend to fall for it for a number of reasons. The RIAA has never raided any file traders house. (The FBI, or someone has raided P2P website owners houses, though.) The RIAA wouldn’t send you an email warning you in advance of any potential raid even if they did. The RIAA doesn’t email you, they just sent you court orders. I thought he would end up calling me and, if he didn’t already assume it was me, I would tell him and then we’d have a good laugh over his minor panic.

When he signed offline an hour or so later, I didn’t think much of it.

Six hours later, I found myself wanting to hang out with him, but he still wasn’t online. I sent him a TXT message, “not online?”

He called me. “Hey man,” he said in a voice that sounded like he had been beaten to death by a ton of bricks.

“What’s up?” I ask, not really even remembering the email.

“Bad shit, man, bad shit.”

“Like what?”

“Sign in to my Gmail account.”

At this point it all registers, “Oh shit man, you’re not shitting your pants over that RIAA email are you?”

“What? How’d you know about that!?”

“Dude, it’s not real.”

“YOU ARE SHITTING ME! WHO WROTE THAT SHIT?”

“Uh, man, I did.” At this point I’m thinking it’s pretty funny.

“NO FUCKING SHIT! OH MY GOD!” At this point he’s crying and practically screaming at me over the phone.

I receive another call, and since my friend is being, well, a little melodramatic I think, I tell him to hold on and switch over to the other call. While I’m on the other line, my hysterical friend hangs up.

After I hang up, I call back the hysterical friend. He picks up, says, “Give me a moment,” and hangs up again.

He calls back about five minutes later and shouts, “Whatever you do, do not go to my house! I will call you in five minutes!” and hangs up again.

At this point I tell Trista, my girlfriend, about what’s going on, and although we have a good laugh about it, part of me is a bid worried that he did something drastic like set his entire family on fire and drilled through all of his hard drives. Admittedly that would be hilarious, but I would feel really bad about his hard drives.

He calls back, still slightly hysterical. He lectures me about what an asshole I am. He tells me he yanked all his hard drives out of his computer and sent them to Diamond Bar, about half an hour away. He sent his mom’s laptop to somewhere else. That’s all he would tell me.

A bit later, in online chat where he wanted the address of the mail spoofer so he could further reassure himself the email wasn’t real (even though I told him repeatedly it was written by myself), I told him I was glad that he didn’t break anything. He said, I did break some things. I asked him what he broke, but he wouldn’t tell me.

Apparently he also posted in the Direct Connect hub that he was under investigation by the RIAA, forwarded my fake email to the hub admin, and suggested the hub be shut down.

Chances are I probably wont hear from him for a very long time. He was pretty pissed and I can only imagine the drastic things that he might have done that I have no idea about.

I feel really bad about it, but at the same time I think it’s pretty fucking hilarious, just because I have perspective on the situation. Mostly everyone I’ve told about it in my efforts to make myself feel better have thought it was pretty hilarious… Though, I’m curious to see how far the blast radius traveled outward. But, then again, do I really want to know whether or not he actually set his whole family on fire?