It wasn't me, honest!

Pardon me, I seem to have spammed.

Every few months, I get an onslaught of emails marked Undeliverable. The attachment subjects are cryptic and sometimes profane. The most baffling ones include exhortations to various people not to wash their hair with the shampoo from some advertisement. Needless to say, I promptly delete them without opening them.

I am not a shampoo expert, so it wouldn't occur to me to send emails to everyone in my address book on that particular subject. In fact, I wouldn't have emailed everybody in my address book anyway. I don't recognize the email addresses of these people to whom I supposedly sent advice on hair products.

Besides, if I were going to spam people, I would stick to what I know, real estate, and spam them with listings of homes for sale in the San Antonio area.

But the return address on the emails is mine. That is what is disturbs me. Netizens all over the world, incensed at my meddling in their private ablution rituals, will now send bad karmic vibes my way.

Spoofing of emails is pretty common. Somebody, somewhere has had their email account hacked or has downloaded a virus that sends emails to everyone in their address book, which is forwarded to everyone in those other address books. The spam bot picks a return email address so the hapless victim doesn't realize their account or computer has been infected.

So in one respect, the hirsute spoofing messages are reassuring. At least I know it's not my system that is to blame!

I only hope the dozens (hundreds?) of people who have received the spoof emails that look like they came from me will understand. To paraphrase Richard Nixon, "I am not a spammer!"