[SGVLUG] E-mail "stamps" -- someone finally did it, it seems...

[Emerson, Tom]

> -----Original Message-----
> Behalf Of serross at ix.netcom.com
> 
> I would send a reply telling this person they have ONE day to 
> remove dumbness OR just replt with a billing for $50,000.00 
> for the privlidge of signing up on the listserver.

It isn't exactly "dumbness" on their part -- in fact, dealing with e-mail lists (especially "anonymous" ones) was one of the reasons I "ran out of steam" on my project to do exactly the same thing.  I certainly don't want to "escalate" this into some form of e-mail war -- in fact, I had posted the address simply on the hopes that soemone here actually knows the person (and is already on the "good" side of the fence with them) so they could point out the "slip up" of the program they are using [and if they are creating it themselves, show where they stepped in the goo...]

I did notice a number of "postmaster at comcast" replies just prior to it, so it is /possible/ that something got hosed at the ISP which /resulted/ in the message looking like it came /directly/ from me rather than the list [there were actually two messages from this person -- one as part of "spam slueth" stating that the from address is unknown, and the second stating simply "pay me to read your message"]  I suspect that if this went through the "normal" route and didn't get munged, "spindel" already has properly white-listed the sgvlug list address, but not necessarilly every correspondant within the list [after all, the reply was directly to me, and we have our list set up to insert a "reply-to" header to ensure things get back to the list -- but that's a different religious war ;) ]

then there is a third possibility -- someone, somewhere, has contracted a virus that not only scarfs up a random return address, but also inserts a subject that the "random addressee" recently sent to increase the likelihood of getting the mark to open the item.  In which case, stopping stuff like this at the door is a good thing [but like any other "joe-job" misdirection, only places the blame on the innocent]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Emerson, Tom" <Tom.Emerson at wbconsultant.com>
> 
> Someone using an e-mail address of "spindel56 at comcast" has 
> installed something that sent an automated request for $0.37 
> in order to "release" my e-mail to him/her.  [...]