Barrysworld.com email addresses - Pondering the Problem

[Guest]

Fella, the domain appears to have been poached, which will have entailed someone fraudulently impersonating whoever was previously looking after barrysworld.com (DBs perchance?) and asking another host to take it over. The litigation will take a very long time indeed, the new hosts are in the US which means parties (and thus officials) from England, the US and Holland are involved... It could be much later this year before the whole matter gets ironed out and even then there's no guarantee it will be returned to its rightful owners. Anything you do now could prove to be a very temporary solution...

At any length, it being locked-down like that means the MX record simply can't be repointed, even if it did, GAME.NETs data protection policy (and the DPA itself) probably means they can't let you have it. Think about it, thousands of users have mailboxes on @barrysworld.com addresses. If you set the domain back up then you'd technically be able to harvest all that email, any users who haven't changed things over before the big cutoff will have anything and everything from online shopping to online banking accounts sending stuff to those addresses - do you really want to take on that responsability and liability?

The simplest answer is to set up forwarding on your barrysworld.com mailbox now and get any mail in there into an offline PST, then start registering yourself a domain and look after number one...

Tbh all i wanted was to try and find out if we could keep our @barrysworld.com email addresses, if we can then it seems like there are other people that want to keep them as well. Forwarding from my BW mailbox will be turned off on jan 23rd, so whats the use in that. Your comment about "looking after number one" makes me sick, is that the kind of caring attitude that brings online communities together, no its fucking not.

I also aint your "fella", so stfu and dont comment until you have something positive to say.

 

[Guest]

All game have to do is forward the mails from their end, its not rocket science and wont require any support. They also dont have to change the Mxrecord because its at their end.

It IS true that i dont have a box to put it on (yet), but how much can it cost.

Answers on a postcard.


Richard.


It also makes me laugh that the so called "old school" gamers like xavier really dont want to know about this. Selfish attitudes dont do anything for the gaming scene.

 

[Xavier]

Ok, firstly the point about looking after number one was referencing the fact that you could get sued back to the stone age if something went awry with someone else's email, IF game.net transferred the domain... which in all honesty I can't imagine them doing.

You're the only person here on such a "crusade" to keep your BW email, others while commenting that the addresses were nice to have also appreciate that it's not exactly hard to shift things over to another mailbox, and personally I just think you'd be better off spending your time doing this than trying to do anything with the above. Barrysworld was a company GAME acquired, even if they did have the ability to change the MX record (which they don't) then there would be that minor matter of their data protection policy which covered any users who signed up for their service and in short you've a snowflakes chance in hades of pulling the above off...

With regards to forwarding DBs is right - it's something Game probably wouldn't entertain either, they're dropping every aspect of the business... If the forwarding fell over there would be no one for you to contact as there's no body paid to do those jobs any more.

I'd just accept it and move on with the majority....

Ever heard of a guy called Sisyphus?

 

[Guest]

sly and evil and used to way-lay travelers and murder them. He betrayed the secrets of the gods and chained the god of death, Thanatos, so the deceased could not reach the underworld.

hmm, is that a description of me.

nice

 

[Xavier]

No, I was more referring to the effort of him rolling the boulder up the hill for all eternity. Which at least answers my question

Xav

 

[Guest]

I dont think it as a hapless labour, its also interesting that the person who "stole" the domain name actually replied back to my emails yesterday really quickly, but dave.evans@game has as yet declined to answer my question.

maybe he's got his own boulder to roll and hasn't time to reply.

If he doesnt reply i will leave it, although it stinks.


Richard.

 

[Xavier]

Heh, well in Dave's defence he's a busy man, whereas from what I can tell the guy who stole barrysworld.com is a quakenet script kiddie...

Xav

 

[Steiny]

What we can do

Let's get this very clear - there are two unrelated issues, and we can only do anything about one.

1) The ownership of Barrysworld.com is in dispute. We cannot do anything about this, nor do we need to.
2) The place where Barrysworld.com currently forwards mail to is owned by Game, and is going to be shut down. This we can work on.

We need to concentrate on the problem of getting Game permit the cheapest possible forwarding option that keeps our addresses alive. It is a political question, not really a technical one. Here is my plan for how we do this.

First, I gather a number of supportive people together, perhaps in the form of a petition.

Second, I write a single email to John Steinbrecher, the Group Chief Executive of Gamegroup, asking in a polite, friendly and grownup fashion if he would consider a simple forwarding arrangement. I will stress the tiny cost of this compared with the brand reputation and direct sales loss that will result from annoying even a small number of his own customers. I will also stress that it would be trivial for us to raise the money to cover the costs of maintaining this.

Third, we'll see what he says. And fourth? Well, hopefully we won't have to resort to a fourth

 

[Xavier]

You're talking about forwarding all of the email to another server? Or having them set up a facility where individual users can elect to have their @barrysworld.com forwarded?

Xav

 

[RandomBastard]

He sounds like hes talking about us as in freddyshouse users rather than everybody.

 

[Guest]

Its nice to see someone called Antonio Corveli has registered www.freddyshouse.com

Lets hope theres no repeat domain pinching.

 

[Deebs]

Its nice to see someone called Antonio Corveli has registered www.freddyshouse.com

Lets hope theres no repeat domain pinching.

It is actually Antonio Covelli and that be me!

 

[Insane]

It is actually Antonio Covelli and that be me!

he is "the godfather"

ooh, thats just given me an idea for his avatar
*goes off to find it*

 

[Wildwood]

/me signs steiny's petition

 

[Guest]

It is actually Antonio Covelli and that be me!

Doh, i Knew it was you.

Heres the latest news from Game central.

After i emailed asking for a forward from Game.net for the emails.


Hi Richard,

Sorry, no. While trivial from a technical perspective, its simply not possible from a Data Protection angle. There are also plenty of other reasons that are commercially sensitive that I'm simply not going to get into.

Regards

Dave Evans

So it seems thats your lot.

At least i tried rather than twiddling my thumbs.

Richard.

 

[bigfoot]

brooky - whilst I admire your gusto the fact is DBs said that it wasn't going to happen on page #1 of this thread, so whilst you may have "tried" it was always going to be without any kind of result.

 

[Guest]

brooky - whilst I admire your gusto the fact is DBs said that it wasn't going to happen on page #1 of this thread, so whilst you may have "tried" it was always going to be without any kind of result.

Ok, kick me when i'm down why dont you. I felt i wanted to have a go and see if i could get it sorted, i didnt intend treading on anyones shoes, i dont want to be held up as anything other than a person who wanted to accomplish something that other people felt strongly about. I will now retire as gracefully as i can. Next time i may think twice about trying to help, and join the rest of the apathetic lot who dont give a hoot, although i dont think i will, its not my style.

Richard.

 

[Deebs]

Ok, kick me when i'm down why dont you. I felt i wanted to have a go and see if i could get it sorted, i didnt intend treading on anyones shoes, i dont want to be held up as anything other than a person who wanted to accomplish something that other people felt strongly about. I will now retire as gracefully as i can. Next time i may think twice about trying to help, and join the rest of the apathetic lot who dont give a hoot, although i dont think i will, its not my style.

Richard.

That is a bit harsh Richard, he didn't kick you, he said he admired you but he knew it was not going to happen.

 

[bigfoot]

Brooky - my point is that there are obviously things we cannot say in public that we (the employees / soon to be ex-employees) know about this whole situation. Whilst I can appreciate you wanted to get some form of official response from a GAME bigwig it was stated quite clearly by DBs on page 1 as to what was / wasn't possible, yet for some reason people seemed to ignore this.

 

[Steiny]

Data Protection, eh? I've written off an email to a couple of friendly experts and we'll see what they're worried about.

I am starting to envisage how this could be done.

For one week only, people who want to save their bw account use said account to email a forwarding address to an administrator, along with their username and password for their old BW account.

These are collected for a week, and U/P are used to confirm that the senders are who they claim to be.

Then a permanent MX redirect of some kind is set up, and left for ever on some forgotten server. If game don't want to pay for upkeep, then we can see about compensating them.

Everyone else who doesn't do this loses their account, and Game instantly lose a huge HDD/bandwidth overhead.

How does that sound?

 

[DaGaffer]

Right, I'm going to say this once. Forget it, not going to happen. We're not going to continue supporting a few people's bw email accounts ad infinitum. Notwithstanding DPA issues (and there are issues Steiny), email forwarding means support etc. and we're not going to do it. All of the staff (including me) are in the same position and are losing their personal bw addresses as well. Sorry to be blunt, but I've seen these things fester before and I wanted us all to stop wasting our time. End of discussion.

 

[Guest]

That is a bit harsh Richard, he didn't kick you, he said he admired you but he knew it was not going to happen.

After a re read of what Bigfoot said, i agree with you Tony, (thanks Bigfoot).

Richard.

 

[Whipped]

I get to much porn in my Barrysworld email address anyway. I for one am glad it's going. Time for a fresh start

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Pleased at wazzerphuk@* going, all I get in that inbox these days is dodgy yank spam about which pills I can buy online...

My other one though, is going to be a pain in the arse to replace, been my proper addy for ages, can't even being to start thinking of how many people have it and think it will be mine forever ... :/

 

[Steiny]

You win

Ah feck, I give up. I won't push Game to keep the Barrysworld email addresses, and I won't write to the CEO, if only to keep to the spirit of promise I made to Ted in the pub a few weeks ago.

However, I would definitely like to register my extreme disappointment that Game has decided to abandon all these addresses.

First, it is a poor business decision - tarnishing your brand capital and pissing of a small but influential sector of your clientelle for the sake of a few hundred quid. I won't be buying from Game again in the near future, and I imagine there may be a few others like me. I wonder how much more money Game will lose compared to the cost of keeping that one process running on one server?

Second, it just isn't 'a nice thing to do'. It will almost certainly destroy at least a few friendships and business relationships. It is completely legal, but would almost certainly not have been in the postal or telephone industry. Both those have statutory obligations to give much longer notification-times.

I've just deleted something very rude here. So instead I'll just say

best wishes,

Steiny

 

[Cenuij]

Well i'm going games shopping on Sat morning

on my shopping list on Saturday is NFS underground, i'll probably buy it from game as i'll be in town.

I'll lose a BW email address as well, but i dont really give a shit because it's not a big fucking deal at all.

Boycotting a retailer cos they wont let you keep a fucking email address? Please get a life.

Sorry but this thread now just seems to be a bunch of people throwing their toys out of the pram.

please lock it?

 

[raw]

Like ive said before, im not worried about losing mine, it got to overloaded with spam

As for boycotting the game shop, well its a bit ott really.

 

[Deebs]

Each to their own I guess.

I was the first person ever to have a barrysworld.com address, I will not be the last one as I will more than likely delete it off the system sometime this week. I never read the bollox that gets sent to it anyway. Most people know of other email addresses they can get me on.

Do I feel sad? Nope, it is the past, it is being shutdown. It's kinda like those tree-hugging hippie people who try and stop roads from being built, it is gonna happen so drop out of the trees and fuckoff, costing me thousands in tax for the police bill etc.

so for all your harvest bots: dbs@barrysworld.com dbs@barrysworld.com dbs@barrysworld.com acovelli@barrysworld.com acovelli@barrysworld.com

Right, now back to more important things.

 

[adams901]

It was nice to have a barrysworld email account but its loss isn't the end of the world, I will just use one of the many other email accounts I have while I wait for someone to setup @freddyshouse.com emails .

 

[Gumbo]

Now, I probably have a @Barrysworld email address by default, but i've never checked it, and I don't care that it's going, but I have a question and this seems as good a place as any to ask.

In a year or so's time, for instance, when all the disputes that can't be talked about are resolved, presumably someone will end up owning the Barrysworld.com address.

So...

Can't they then set it all up again for the 3 or so people who seem to actually want to keep them, with the mails physically going through a whole new system, with new accounts, passwords, etc?

Please don't start up the whole Game should be doing it anyway argument, just answer the question, is this possible, once the whole 'who owns what' is resolved?