I received a very angry email from someone today.
They had received a spam which looked to them like it had been sent to them
from my grantcgi-announce mailing list. The "To:" field of the spam
contained the address of my list (which is what made the recipient think
they got it from my list).
I was able to immediately see that the message was not from my list (the
list is moderated - I'm the only one who can post to it). However, the user
(their judgement clouded by the annoyance of receiving spam - something I
can relate to) upon finding they couldn't unsubscribe from my list (since
they weren't actually a subscriber) proceeded to send out some mail to
various addresses (including an AT&T admin because the From: address was an
att.com address) to have me dealt with for the spam (which I didn't do).
Now, I certainly agree with and advocate challenging spammers at every
opportunity, but here is a case where I too was a victim of the spammer
(although the user did not know that from their limited understanding of
the situation).
I have responded to the user (and the various addresses they Cc'd) to
clarify the situation and make sure they understand that I am not the
spammer. I've also asked them to forward a copy of the complete headers for
the spam message so I can try to take action on it, too.
Has anyone here had to deal with a situation like this before? Any
recommendations?
Thanks.
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