Have you ever had your company mistaken for another?

[Sac Arrow]

So I'm like checking my email right and I get this:

From: Bill Smith
To: Sacramento Arrow
Re: Confidential Report

Sac,

The assessment report for our Honduras operations is a classified document, and it is available online and without password protection. We request that you remove it immediately.

Thanks,

Bill

http:\\darkstone.com\files\Honduras_assessment.pdf

To which I reply....

Bill,

I agree completely, however, you may wish to contact someone over at Darkstone about that, since they prepared the report.

Sac

Correct name and email, but entirely wrong company. Sheesh, before you go ragging on your consultant for security breach issues, MAKE SURE YOU ARE TALKING TO THE RIGHT CONSULTANT!!

Oh by the way, Darkstone really did a crappy job with that report.

 

[poadeleted20]

Usually when you get an apparently spurious email like that, it's a scam, and when you click on the link, bad things happen.

 

[EdFred]

I often get requests for offshore oil drilling equipment as we share the same company name with a place in Texas.

 

[docmirror]

Phishing.

Title of email says it all: Re: Confidential Report

Pretty good chance you are infected now, or the sender has confirmed a valid email address inside your company, and you've now compromised your own internal mail server security protocol.

Oops. Don't worry, we have guys do it all the time in my co. Your mail admin will prolly catch it soon enough. The worst in memory was the "I love you" virus. Man - you could tell the lonely hearts club by who got caught with that one...

 

[Sac Arrow]

Oh no, this wasn't a phishing scam at all. It really was from Bill Smith, and the link really did have a non-infected confidential PDF report from the company's actual website.

Bill apologized profusely.

By the way, the other firm is a competitor of ours, and we should have been the one to prepare that report. They use us both so that's how he got confused. So, right consultant, wrong project I guess.

 

[MAKG1]

I get e-mails all the time for people with the same name as me at JPL and ASU. Except, I don't know anything about antenna theory, so I really can't answer them aside from "umm, you mean this other guy."

The JPL guy is into procurement, which could get folks into a lot of trouble if they say the wrong things. The other "FAR"s are not very forgiving of passing sensitive information to outsiders.

 

[Clark1961]

We get all sorts of stuff intended for a company with a similar name in Texas. Some guy was sure I wanted to lease his land. Another guy was sure he was digging near our pipeline in west Texas (we have nothing in west Texas). The pipeline question was bad because the guy was doing his best to comply with one-call requirements and I just couldn't help him. Invoices from vendors are a fairly regular problem..no, we don't have property there, sorry. Service agreements are as bad, I've sent service agreements to folks just to have them turn around and say they've already got one in place...would you send me a copy? and sure enough it's the other folks with an address in Dallas.

 

[Graueradler]

Yes. I used to work for Babcock and Wilcox. We built nuclear power plants including TMI. Some of our people were checking into a hotel after the TMI accident and after the DC-10 engine fell off in Chicago(?). When the desk clerk saw the company name, he asked if we weren't the people who build the DC-10.

 

[docmirror]

Yes. I used to work for Babcock and Wilcox. We built nuclear power plants including TMI. Some of our people were checking into a hotel after the TMI accident and after the DC-10 engine fell off in Chicago(?). When the desk clerk saw the company name, he asked if we weren't the people who build the DC-10.

"No - we didn't build that DC-10. We built Reactor two at Three Mile Island!"



(I worked for Gulf Gen Atomic back in the day)

 

[Sac Arrow]

Hah, I remember at a career fair at our college Babcock & Wilcox was hiring. A buddy of mine, who was an ex submariner (reactor tech) was a natural shoe in.

So he interviewed with them, and when the lady told him that the position was for a sales engineer, she saw the look on his face and said "You really don't want to do this, do you?"

He laughed and said no.

She said "Figures. Nobody does."

 

[masloki]

Had the issue with my personal website that ends in .com getting all sorts of interesting emails aimed at .co.uk. Always worth a laugh to troll through the catchall email account.