after quite sometime, i received a phone call from earthlink, out of the blue. they said that they were just calling to monitor service and just wanted to know how things were going. well, that certainly provided a an opportunity to speak to someone... a real person... on the phone. wow. to make the story short, after some hemming and hawing, denying that such a thing could happen... they finally got back to me and said that they had discovered that somehow, accidentally, they had mailed out about 150 e-mails... like the one i had received. they had realized their mistake and corrected the problem.... yeah right... and said that if i wasn't satisfied they wouold give me their legal department's phone number.

*** ATTENTION ***

Your e-mail is being returned to you because there was a problem with its delivery. The address which was undeliverable is listed in the section
labeled: "----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----".

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

subscriberbenefits@corp.earthlink.net