MetaSpam

[shewhomust]

For the last several months, someone has been spamming as from one of our domains: not actually from that domain, note, but spoofing a quite transparent return address. So a regular part of my morning routine is deleting the non-delivery notices, requests to prove human agency and out of office replies addressed to people who don't exist (well, Andromache Godfrey may exist, but her e-mail address is not inxtd[at] - I'm not actually going to publish which domain).

This stuff, in fact, becomes a form of spam in itself - and the system administrators know it, because they have started using spammers tricks to get their mail past filters. At least, I assume that's the reason I've just received an e-mail with the header: "Out of Office AutoReply: boiling fireman".