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[CQ-Contest] Fishy E-Mail from ARRL Contest Robot

Subject: [CQ-Contest] Fishy E-Mail from ARRL Contest Robot
From: nat@ajheatwole.com (Nat Heatwole)
Date: Tue Jun 17 17:48:05 2003
Fellow contesters,
Today I received an e-mail from the name "ARRL Contest robot" that was
titled "UNABLE TO PROCESS LOG SUBMISSION." The text of the e-mail went
as follows:

"(This is an automatic reply.)

Your message to dxphone@arrl.org could not be processed because it
did not contain a callsign in the email Subject: header.  Please
resubmit your log to dxphone@arrl.org with an email Subject: header
that looks like this"

The e-mail had an attachment that was titled "LUETUT.XLS.pif" that was
72.3 KB large. I found this e-mail quite odd as I did not submit a log
for the past ARRL DX Phone nor did I make any contacts in the contest on
either mode. I hit the reply button to determine who the message really
came from and Outlook Express listed the sender as
unreplyable@alum.mit.edu. I would be willing to bet that the attachment
that came with this e-mail is a victor india radio uniform sugar (I
don't know if CQ-Contest will automatically bounce messages that have
that work in them, hence when I am spelling it out) or something equally
mischivious. Norton, however, did not raise a complaint regarding the
message.

The e-mail message was also sent to many other parties including many
contesters currently subscribed to this list (WN6K, WM5R, K1TTT, NQ4I,
KR7X, K4OJ, WD4AHZ, KR6X, W7WHY, WW3S, among others). I don't know what
this message is all about, but I would encourage anyone who gets this or
a similiar message to delete it immediately. There was a thread on the
PVRC reflector recently about fishy e-mails coming from a supposed "ARRL
robot" and this message may well be part of the same clan. Whatever this
is, it's no normal victor india radio uniform sugar; it came from
someone familiar with contesting, contesters, and CQ-Contest, perhaps
even someone subscribed to CQ-Contest and I felt that everyone on the
list should be made aware of this.

73, Nat, WZ3AR
<nat@ajheatwole.com>

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