[Dixielandjazz] What's this about?

[Don Kirkman]

On Sun, 25 Jan 2009 17:36:40 -0000, Ken Mathieson wrote:

>I got the mail below and an identical one (timed at the same time) ostensibly in connection with a posting I had made to the list. As you can see, the sender made no attempt to identify himself, so I haven't responded to the invitation to reply, I've treated both mails as potentially malicious and zapped them. It could be perfectly genuine, in which case the sender should have identified him/herself. Alternatively, the list might be being used to propagate spam.

>Here's the message:

>Hello,
>You've just sent your first email to me since I've installed Bsafe Online's spam killer. For this first time only, please help me add your email address to my approved sender list.
>Simply reply to this email with the following code in the subject line of your reply.

>158ccf23

>Thanks for your help!
>evidence at otelco.net

Hopefully you'll get more detailed information than I can give, but
this may be a "phishing" message.  The hook is to tell the recipient
something that seems plausible but unverifiable, and entice him into
providing his real email address which is then used to send spam or
other unwanted messages while putting the blame on the innocent
victim.

Another less likely possibility is that someone has already captured
your email address and is using it to send messages in your name.  

I tried some of the standard methods of tracing messages but didn't
find anything that might lead to the culprit.  

The first thing to do is to scan the message for viruses or trojans to
be sure it isn't infecting your system, and then deal with it by
deleting or ignoring it.
-- 
Don Kirkman
donsno2 at charter.net