"quit" spam email -- any theories?

[Hal Bidlack]

Folks,

I have been getting quite a lot of a type of spam I don't understand. They are emails from various fake addresses, and the entire body of the message is a single word: QUIT, all in caps. I am just wondering what these are...?

[Darat]

Hal - can't help you with this since I rarely ever see any junk mail.

And that's why I'm jumping in - don’t you use a spam filter? There are some really good free ones, I use one called "Inboxer" and I can’t even remember the last time I saw any junk mail.

[Soapy Sam]

Hal, have you asked your ISP or Network Admin if they can track the source?

I've had a big upsurge in junk email in the last 2-3 weeks, but I never open them to look at the message. (I only open mails from known contacts., which is an option you probably don't have.)

Are you sure it's not one of your students being a smart alec?

Nice to see you back here.

[Lisa Simpson]

There's no link? Nothing trying to get you to a quit smoking or quit whatever website?

[davidhorman]

Could be a badly written spam bot. The command QUIT is used during SMTP to, well, quit. If a spam bot gets as far as submitting the actual content of the email, it would need to submit a . to break out of submitting DATA before it could QUIT.

David

[Hal Bidlack]

Here is an example from today:


Date: Monday, January 31, 2005 9:59 PM
From: dmilyjeurvcfrw@dora.com

To: undisclosed-recipients:;

Subject:
QUIT

[Peskanov]

You could be the victim of a joke. Somebody has used a spam list to send junk mail to a lot of people, using you address as "sent by". This junk mail contains the usual "reply with QUIT as subject if you want to stop receiving this information about viagra/porn/mortages/etc...".
Now this people tries to "QUIT" from the list of the spammer. The problem is that many of them could blame you for spamming and cause you some troubles with your internet provider...

[Soapy Sam]

Originally posted by Peskanov
[B . This junk mail contains the usual "reply with QUIT as subject if you want to stop receiving this information about viagra/porn/mortages/etc...".
Now this people tries to "QUIT" from the list of the spammer. [/B]

Peskanov - That sounds credible, but I would expect some respondents to add a more emphatic rejection.

[H3LL]

A bit off topic, but can I make an appeal.

If you are using any spam blocking software, would you please check that it's not bouncing the spam back.

Although this idea seems interesting, "Ha! That spammer is going to get all this crap back", it is rarely the case as the reply address is often fake (spoof) and may even be an innocent persons private email.

Bouncing only increases internet traffic and serves very little useful purpose.

If at work, make sure your network administrator is not doing it.

(Gets off soap-box)

[Peskanov]

Soapy,
that's right; I don't usually bother to write anything, but I have seen people writting some rude replies...