At 3/18/2000 12:56 PM -0500, Bob Rogers wrote or quoted:
>Users reply to the damnedest things. If an MTA is configured to
>generate mail from "rumpelstiltskin", then it ought to be configured to
>accept mail for "rumpelstiltskin" as well.
I would have to agree with this first sentence. I have a friend who works
in Hotmail's customer support center, and he had to deal with a woman who
claimed that she couldn't send mail to anyone, and she was getting spammed
by someone named "Damon Mahler".
After much useless question-asking, my friend got her to forward him these
spams, and they of course turned out to be messages from Mailer-Daemon,
trying to inform her that her mail couldn't get anywhere because she needed
to include host names (or something similarly bogus).
There were also a bunch of replies from the woman to "Mr. Mahler" asking
him not to send her any more mail.
My friend informed this lady at great length that there was no Mr. Mahler
out there on the Internet sending her spam; that Mailer-Daemon was a
program, not a human being; and that she needed to do whatever in order to
send out her mail.
She did not believe him. Apparently some friend of hers told her that the
idea was ridiculous, and that of course mere pieces of software couldn't
send people emails, and she decided to take that person's word for it over
that of a (very correct) Hotmail technician.
For all I know, the woman is still persisting in sending mail to "Mr. Damon
Mahler", or has cancelled her Hotmail service because they can't get Mr.
Mahler to stop spamming her.
(Note: This story is only to-the-best-of-my-recollection; if you want to
repost it elsewhere or otherwise distribute it, please let me know and I'll
see if I can get my friend to write it up with the details in place and
corrected so you can send out the true and accurate version rather than my
messed-up retelling. Thanks.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Kai MacTane
System Administrator
Online Partners.com, Inc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
From the Jargon File: (v4.0.0, 25 Jul 1996)
house wizard /n./
A hacker occupying a technical-specialist, R&D, or systems position
at a commercial shop. A really effective house wizard can have influ-
ence out of all proportion to his/her ostensible rank and still not
have to wear a suit.
