Help! I'm trapped in a ???
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For the past couple of weeks, I've been getting a bunch of curious email messages that start like these:
Thank you for contacting the comics and features department at The Washington Post. Even though this is an automatic reply to inform you that we have received your comment, we still want you to know that we read every comment individually.
Thank you for contacting the Death Notices Advertising Department of the Washington Post and allowing us to serve you. Your email has been received. Listed below you will find general and required information that you may find useful.
Every day I get four or five similar acknowledgments from the comics department or the death notices department over at the Washington Post, although I've never sent any messages to either entity, or to any other WaPo address.
This might be an especially indirect death threat from a marginally net-savvy prescriptivist crime lord — the sort of plot device that Dan Brown might use in a so-far-unpublished novel — but I've concluded that it's more likely to be just one of those random growths that blooms in the bilges of the internet. A couple of days ago, the Post's Editor's Query department began sending me messages as well, which I found oddly comforting:
Thanks for your response to our Editor's Query feature. We are being flooded with so many excellent responses that we won't be able to run them all. If we do decide to publish your story, we'll call you beforehand to verify information, edit (if necessary) and arrange payment. Again, we appreciate your submission.
And some additional evidence for the random-weirdness hypothesis arrived this morning, in the form of a billet-doux from the University of Arkansas's "LISTSERV server 14.5":
> Thanks for your response to our Editor's Query feature. We are being
You're welcome!
> flooded with so many excellent responses that we won't be able to run them
Unknown command – "FLOODED". Try HELP.
> all. If we do decide to publish your story, we'll call you beforehand to
Unknown command – "ALL.". Try HELP.
> verify information, edit (if necessary) and arrange payment. Again, we
Unknown command – "VERIFY". Try HELP.
> appreciate your submission.
Unknown command – "APPRECIATE". Try HELP.
> The Magazine Staff
Unknown command – "THE". Try HELP.
Summary of resource utilization
——————————–
CPU time: 0.000 sec Device I/O: 24
Overhead CPU: 0.000 sec Paging I/O: 0
CPU model: 2-CPU Opteron 244 1M (2047M)
I couldn't have put it better myself!
John McFerran said,
December 16, 2010 @ 11:00 am
Best case: a spamster is forging messages using your email address for the "Return-Path" and/or "From" headers.
Worst case: a spammer is using a trojan on one of your computers to send emails.
[(myl) Both possibilities had occurred to me. But neither offers an obvious explanation for why I'm only getting such responses/bounces from departments at the Washington Post, or how the University of Arkansas got involved.]
Twitter Trackbacks for Language Log » Help! I’m trapped in a ??? [upenn.edu] on Topsy.com said,
December 16, 2010 @ 11:23 am
[…] Language Log » Help! I’m trapped in a ??? languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2845 – view page – cached For the past couple of weeks, I've been getting a bunch of curious email messages that start like these: […]
Morten Jonsson said,
December 16, 2010 @ 12:44 pm
That's a wonderful piece of found poetry. I'm kind of hoping the mystery isn't solved; I'd rather think of it as a moment when you got to hear the void talking to itself. Like the car radio in Cocteau's Orpheus.
Thomas Thurman said,
December 16, 2010 @ 12:48 pm
If I were you, I'd contact the WaPo for real and ask them whether they'd mind forwarding you one of the emails that they're allegedly receiving from you, with the headers intact. It would at least shed some light on the mystery to know the address they were in fact coming from.
mollymooly said,
December 16, 2010 @ 2:26 pm
Their web submission form includes an email address field. Giving someone else's address is simpler than spoofing an email header.
Sili said,
December 16, 2010 @ 2:36 pm
My guess would be that someone (a vengeful prescriptivist) is using your email maliciously.
Somewhat like how PeeZed Myers gets signed up for gay pr0n by creationists and libertarians.
rpsms said,
December 16, 2010 @ 3:02 pm
The last bit is from the listserv command interface. The "THANKS" command gives it away.
I find it exceedingly odd that that output is wrapped in an email: one would expect to see that as debug output or via a ssh/telnet console session.
Mark said,
December 16, 2010 @ 3:37 pm
@rpsms Lots of listservs allow email-based commands. You can admin the list by sending email that way and not have to have machine access. Most turn it off or limit most of the commands. Usually there is an address for the listserv and a second, unpublished address for the listserv-control.
Many of the spambots use a particular from address on a limited attack space to keep the attack from being noticed. So, just a few large targets got bad mail from you and one address up or down in the list got the next 10,000 targets.
At least most of them are configured not to add the sent text to the reply so you aren't getting the v1@6r^ spam over and over along with the bounces and automated responses. ;-)
Clayton Burns said,
December 16, 2010 @ 6:48 pm
Let's get serious with our conspiracy theories here. (No sooner had the TLS aimed some soccer insinuations at Putin than it discovered that its New York distribution network was in disarray). Just do not make references to Putin in the context of poisoning. And here:
[Acquitted by heavy noun phrase shift? December 1, 2010 @ 10:11 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Language and the law Tom Jackman, "Dropped 'at' in Va. law yields acquittal in school bus case", WaPo 11/30/2010:]
Mark is the one who made The Washington Post look infantile in its Jackman coverage (the paper's Ombudsman is also in a cruel sweat over it).
There had to be some way to retaliate that would go unregistered as to provenance and be a token of future pain. Next time, Mark, do not mention The Washington Post. That will keep you on easy street.
baylink said,
December 17, 2010 @ 9:30 am
Yeah, Mark; you've been joe-jobbed.