Journal: News & Comment

Run! Run for the hills!

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Since I went to bed last night, I have received over 1500 (!) e-mails bounced back from what appears to be a spam mail campaign that may have forged its "from" address to be a very outdated e-mail address of mine -- one which I thought I'd gotten rid of at least two years ago. It turns out that, while I had phased out the e-mail account itself, two administrative e-mail addresses (for a mailing list I used to run from the phased-out address) still exist.

And the mail is still rolling in. "Mail delivery failed," over and over again. Worse yet, the site from which the bounces originate lists its contact e-mail as abuse@panoramicnet.com -- and mail sent there bounces back too.

I'm trying to get IT Services at the University of B.C., where my old account lived, to shut this thing down. They say they'll respond within 72 hours (!!). So by then I should have received, oh, something like 10,000 bounced e-mails. Great.

UPDATE: UBC responded in less than six hours, and the e-mail firehose has been shut down. Thank you, IT Services!

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