First screenshot = one address receiving an average of 3k emails per day from various small biz.

Second screenshot = another address receiving an average of 2k per day from various small biz.

What are the domain names, why do I own them, and why all the traffic?

I did not “typosquat” the names. (that was what we called ‘domainers’ who intentionally registered popular brand names to scoop free traffic).

In the late 90’s I was a domain investor trying to figure out how the internet worked. My computer was a popular brand (not Apple MacIntosh) and I had just moved from DOS to Windows. The computer had flaws and the company had terrible customer service, 45 min. hold times, etc. and did not return calls. I registered a similar name with a dot net suffix, in order to battle with them on the Internet. I outranked them in the search engines due to a “dot net” priority search algorythm created by some genius network operators who wanted .net to be the trump card.

My customer service war lasted only 9 days, since I was getting 7 or 8 thousand daily visitors to a basic chat page, news media was zeroing in, and the corporate office gave in when I said I would take down the site as soon as my computer was fixed and booted up satifactorily.

On day 9, a corporate suit showed up at my office. His tie was removed, his vest unbuttoned, and he wheeled in 3 boxes on a handtruck from the trunk of his Lincoln. He said, where is Paul? As the proprietor of the business, I raised my hand and said, “here”.

He said, “where would you like your new computer?”

“Here is good”, I replied, surprised.

He plugged it in, booted it up, and said, “satisfied?”

I said, :”Yes, thank you”.

He said, “good shut down the website”.

I said, “ok, I didn’t catch your name”.

“I didn’t throw it”, he said, and scurried out the door.

“I followed him out and said, “what about the old computer?”

“Keep it!” he replied, and he was gone.

During the first 3 days the site was live, a representative called me and said 4 attorneys were coming from New York to take the domain away. Of course, I said, “bring it”, and registered 4 more similar names. They were abbreviations in case there was any merit to the claims that they could take my name.

In short, the abbreviations were similar to a large, growing, ISP, of whom I knew little about. A few days after I shut down the original site, a “sysop”, (network system operator), called me on the phone and said,
“You own “blah.net”?
“Yes”.
“We have a quarter million emails floating around in the queue, do you want to download them, or should I delete them?”
I had know idea. I said, I’ll download them, I guess. He told me how to do it, and 25 years later, I still get 5k emails daily from small biz. I couldn’t drop the names for fear a spammer or conmen would get them. The ISP didn’t want them because they were bought out by a bigger company who kept the mail servers active, and they were spelled wrong anyway, duh!

So, I autorespond to all inbound emails with a notice of the error, and occasionally extract some recipients’ addresses, correct them, and let them know the error. I have many thank you messages, but for some reason, the addresses are keepers to the people. “John@blah.net” seems to be more desirable than “John57867@gmail.com” so they keep it.

I am happy to disclose the domain names if it will help, or if you’d like to send an email to see the autoresponse. Email me at admin@theInternet.org.