Even Eric Allman gets spam

Sat Apr 24 11:40:53 GMT 2004 Even Eric Allman gets spam

Well, duh. Of course he does. Don't we all? Just because he is THE sendmail guy, why should that matter? Of course, it doesn't, but I was still slightly surprised to get this email:

Subject: Eric Allman has changed jobs
From:  (I see no need to add to his burden) 
Date: April 23, 2004 8:34:47 AM EDT
To:   tonyl@aplawrence.com

I have left the University.  Your mail is being forwarded to me.
My mail volume is huge these days, so if your question is about
one of the listed topics, PLEASE use that address:
 ..

He then lists several possible topics (Sendmail, Usenix, etc.) with specific addresses, and then concludes with a personal address. I've left all that out and munged the header above because I don't want to add to his mail volume.

This is an auto-responder, and I hadn't written to Eric about anything. I think he and I may have had some brief email or newsgroup exchanges over the years, but he doesn't know me from Adam and we aren't regular correspondents. This response obviously came from some piece of spam that had previously harvested my email address, and Eric's mail-bot took it as real mail. That's what surprises me: that he would add to his own burden by letting a bot auto-respond like this and actually give out more addresses to be plagued!

Not that it really matters, I suppose. The guy is famous, his address is going to be easy enough to find, so he's going to get tons of crap anyway. It is sad, though.

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