A strange advert at the station.

[baratron]

Another advert that I walk past every day is for a new thriller. It reads as follows: "Dr David X (Beck? Peck? Deck?) has just received an email from his wife. But Elizabeth Beck/Peck/Deck was brutally murdered eight years ago."

Clearly, this is an example of thriller writers moving into the 21st century. But I have two questions based on this write-up:
(1) If she was murdered 8 years ago, who's been paying to keep her email account active?
(2) How does he know it was from her, when it's been typed?

Hmmm.

Comments

[baxil.livejournal.com]

I'm writing a murder thriller too. Coincidentally, it's about the same idea. Here's how it starts:

sh# telnet
> o mail.davidbeck.com 25
220 davidbeck.com, SMTP ready 
HELO 
250 HELO 196.198.12.11, nice to meet you
MAIL FROM: <lizbeck@murdervictims.com>
250 Sender OK
RCPT TO: <dr@davidbeck.com>
250 Recipient OK
DATA
354 Please provide message body, end with "." on a line by itself
From: Elizabeth Beck  <lizbeck@murdervictims.com>
Subject:  David?  David?!  Help!  I'm still alive!
X-Hidden-Header-Message: h4 h4 d00d, i am realy the murder0r, i fooled j00

David!  I know you think I've been dead for eight years but I'm sending you
an e-mail now and you're reading this on the Internet so it MUST BE TRUE!
Please come rescue me from my evil captor who's been holding me against
my will for eight years and ONLY LETTING ME USE AOL (sob!).  Oh, and
please forward this message on to all of your friends or else you will get
bad luck!  If you send this to thirty people within an hour you will find
out who the real culprit was!

Love and kisses,

Your wife, who's still alive, and it's your wife, really, not just some
random hacker, I swear, look, even the e-mail address matches!
.
512 E-mail accepted, enter next command
QUIT
400 Goodbye, have a nice day
sh# logout
(Session Terminated)

-- Baxil, geeking out

[lizw.livejournal.com]

(1) There are still free accounts out there. If I'm murdered tomorrow and no-one tells Planet-save, that account will be there until they go bust.

(2)He doesn't, but "an e-mail claiming to be from his wife" would be too long for the poster and/or the average passerby's concentration span, and not half such a good hook ;-)

Mail

[hiddenpaw.livejournal.com]

I hear of emails turning up late all the time.
To be that late though it would proberly have to be BT Open World.

[wuzzie.livejournal.com]

Answers to both these questions popped into my head before I even tried to think about it:

(1) It probably was sent 8 years ago, but has been sitting in the mail queue on a relay server for a while. Probably deferred due to DNS failure. Someone set the sendmail timeout value to 10 years by mistake, when they meant 10 days. Or something.

(2) I presume it must have been PGP signed.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Or it's just been stuck in a UUCP forwarding loop. It does happen from time to time, I guess...