|My instincts say:  this is a hoax designed to "get" whoever it is
|on the receiving end of that same address over and over again.
|
|I vaguely recall hearing about something like this -- does anybody
|know?  I would like to stop the damage before it gets worse.

Check these WEB sites esp. the last one:

http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html
http://kumite.com/myths/
http://ww
w.unm.edu/cirt/irc/svcs/security/notification.html
http://www.cancer.org/cha
in.html