dummy email in PPEC tricks zencart

I have an annual event ticket sales site up, so we get many users without many returning users. So, I recommend that they don't register and they let PPEC create their account.

Unfortunately, multiple people now have entered their email into PPEC as "[email protected]".

I believe that when PPEC returns to zencart, zencart says 'we already have that customer registered' and uses that customer_id for the order. This causes some confusion as the original owner's registration shows orders from others, and the later orders get their billing address filled in from the existing customer address book.

I don't know if there's any way to avoid this - it could just as easily be '[email protected]" as "[email protected]". I'm wondering what the best way to 'fix' this is.Should I go into MySQL and change the email address on the zen_customers table? This will prevent future customers from joining in to the existing dummy email. How about the existing orders that are erronously tied to the initial customer - can I simply create a new customer record in zen_customers and change the customer_id in zen_orders?

Not a big, gating problem, actually more of a curiosity question.

Thanks,
Carl

PayPal shouldn't be letting customers use non-validated email addresses.
Zen Cart receives the email address used at PayPal to create the Zen Cart account.
So what you're experiencing is not a result of customers using a dummy email address on PayPal and then Zen Cart creating a dummy account for it.

If your customers are creating a Zen Cart account with a dummy email address, then it should still be only that customer that can log into that account ... for 2 reasons: (1) only they know the password, and (2) PayPal will not use a dummy address to link to, since it only uses validated addresses in its accounts.

Is that still true when they don't have and don't create a paypal acct?

That is, they go to paypal, click on the 'No account? No problem, continue' button, then they enter their credit card info, and instead of saying 'Save info with PayPal, they press the 'Review Payment' button and continue to the shipping address and then back to zencart.

The email in question actually is [email protected] - I'm not masking any real address here.

Anyway, I think I found the culprit - I've instructed our ticket seller to use an actual account (our own) for phone orders.

PayPal does not validate email address for users who use the 'don't have paypal account' option.