I’ve done it, you’ve done it. You’re rushed to get something done or you just don’t look at the return address and hit reply and send on a highly sensitive email. Never really seeing that the email address said “do not reply”  So where does it go? Well, if the company is smart, they’ve configured the address to be donotreply @ their company .com but unfortunately, some companies don’t realize or are sloppy and tag donotreply.com at the end of it.

So, those emails won’t actually go back to the company that sent them, nor do they disappear into the email neverland. 

They go here: www.donotreply.com

Chet Faliszek says he bought the domain back in the sweet bubble days of yore when that kind of real estate meant potential big bucks later. He had no idea the mass of emails he would start receiving and the sensitivity of them.

Chet often posts the (edited) emails sent back to the companies and this paragraph in particular caught my eye:

Since Merrill Lynch doesn’t even bother to tell people not to reply to the emails, and the emails are either telling people they have lost the right to sell insurance, or they are about to… I have plenty of private replies. None of which will ever get to anyone at Merrill Lynch to help them with their problem.

Amazing. And chilling. Read through some of the other instances of how a simple @unknown.com or @donotreply.com on your form, canned or auto responses can expose your business to all kinds of trouble.

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software