RE: [AV Media Matters] Email Problems

["Dickinson, Thomas" <dickinst@ncr.disa.mil>]

Reply to the list and Graeme Jaye's post below:

Graeme:

I was the person to first contact the Smithsonian IT help desk this morning
to alert them to the problem and get it turned off.  When I logged on today,
I had 647 of these emails from Wford.  I thought a temporary unsubscribe
note to the listserve would be a quick way to automatically shut off the
flow.  I work in a military operations environment in which precious little
network bandwidth is available for non-military uses.  This torrent of
emails had the potential to overload the system, and who knew whether it was
some kind of virus.

In fact, the very helpful Smithsonian network administrator I spoke with
told me they are utterly baffled by this, as they do not have anyone by the
name of Wford who works at the Smithsonian, and that the address subdomain
attached to Wford does not exist!  So they are not sure who initiated this,
or how it happened, but they are checking.

Unsubscribe for me, as I'm sure for others, was just a prudent, temporary,
prophylactic gesture, if you will.

Tom Dickinson