Free gold from Paul Vixie? I don't think so.

Sat Feb 22 01:34:25 UTC 1997

Three days ago someone forged mail in my name, and again in the name of
everyone mentioned anywhere in www.vix.com, to every member of the U.S.
Senate and House, threatening to delete all their files and shut down all
of their systems.  It was crudely done, easily detected as a forgery,
easily traced, and now the subject of interest for the FBI.

Today someone forged spam in my name, to I-don't-know-yet how many users,
offering to give away "FREE GOLD!!!" and giving my e-mail address and
that of <scott at zorch.sf-bay.org>, an employee here and also a major spam
fighter in his spare time.  I've already received over a hundred complaints
and e-mail bounces, and a few "Free gold? Sure, send some to me at <addr>."

I can only infer from this that what we're doing is hurting the business of
spam, and that they are worried about us.  So I take it as highly encouraging
and if I needed any excuse to redouble my efforts, this would be it.  I've
created a vacation message and a procmail script so the next ten thousand
or so bounces and complaints will be handled automatically.

I am also working with the relay sites used to forge and export this spam,
to educate them about <URL:http://www.sendmail.org/antispam.html> and also
about spam in general <URL:http://www.vix.com/spam/> and about my real time
blackhole feed.  Today I got calls from several folks who I've blackholed or
suggested blackholing lately, each being a request for help and education.