I’m seeing an interesting new development in the exciting world of e-mail spam. I’ve been getting some replies to spam messages that are (falsely) using my domain name as the sender address. For example, a message containing this lovely text:
With the o~nli`ne ph’ar_m`a_cy that carries over 220 m,~ed_s, o..f`fers
f.a`st and reliable service, your ordes on m_,ed,s like v.i`agr-a,
Le^vitr,a, Xa~-na-x, Telf_a_st, Premarin, , V^al.`ium and d,ar’von are
always secured and taken care of.
Was sent from jeff@bitrelay.net to some guy named Damon Bouillon. He replied to the message with:
small: for they are the most dangerous discontentments, where the fear
Naturally his response came to me, since the original spam used my address. Nice. Although on the one hand I think it’s funny to send automated responses with the same kind of crappy confusing text the spammers use, I also think it shows some lack of insight to recognize that almost all spammers use fake sender addresses. Thus, in playing your little joke you’re bothering legitimate users.
Why can’t they all just go away?