A Challange/Problem For The E-mail Masters Around Here

[AdemoS]

First of all, I wholeheartedly applogize for not making this topic spamgourmet-service related, however this is a quandry I have always had to deal with so I wanted to know if anyone had a new idea.

In the past, I too took the spamgourmet mindset, I assumed all places I signed up at could POTIENTIALLY spam me. My main mail service I used was a gmail account while my DUMMY account was a yahoo one. I signed up for anything I needed to with Yahoo's, and dealt with spam accordingly. This worked well to keep my gmail account clean of the bullshit and only containing e-mails I wanted.

Till...fairly recently. Besides the few spam e-mails I get, (which aren't enough to matter) I have been getting VERY strange e-mails, from THOUSANDS of completely random addresses. However it is not normal spam all these messages are the "Delivery Failed" bounceback messages you normally get when you sent a message and it didn't send correctly.

However, I am NOT sending ANY of this mail. Somehow, my address is being used as a return address for spammers. To experts such as you, this is probably a simple task, but for someone like me, I'm not sure how they are using my address to send out mail without my password. Ghosting your real e-mail address with a fake one was something that I didn't think worked anymore...

Overall take a look at one of the thousands of Delivery Failed Messages I have been getting. I did a whois on two of these e-mails to see who the real senders were. Both ended up being from Russia..which in my state of headache proved to be funny in a sterotypical-joke kind of way. Whois Report 1 Whois Report 2

As you can see, these two IPs, are obvious not my own. (My ISP and I both live in the US)

So first of all, thank you for reading all that. Secondly, does ANYONE have an explanation of what is causing this. And thirdly, most importantly, does ANYONE have a soultion to stop this unusual problem from occuring.

[josh]

What you're going through is the fallout from what's commonly called a Joe Job ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job -- the wikepedia article correctly states that joe jobs are intentional acts to harm the victim, but these days you'll see the term used even if the motive is different).

Using a fake address in the "From:" field was and is still trivial to do. Some proposed schemes (like SPF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework ) would address this problem, but they haven't been universally adopted yet, and even with the current significant level of adoption, I haven't seen one that would prevent someone from *sending* such a message -- they just alert the recipient that it looks funny (or block it from the recipient, or whatever -- maybe even generating some of your bouncebacks, even though that wouldn't make much sense).

I hate to say this, but there's no good remedy I know of except to wait it out. The good news is that they probably won't do it again with your address, so after the current flood of bouncebacks (and maybe even misdirected complaints) falls off, you may have normal service again. The potentially bad news is that your address may find its way into virus email circulation if the recipients of the spam had infected computers.

It's happened to me several times (quite possibly with the intention to harm), but I don't think there were too many consquences after the initial bounceback. Now that I think about it, it's happened quite a bit -- to the point that I now filter out bounceback messages. It does die off, though.

By the way, if you're ever involved in strategic spam fighting discussions where somebody suggests a retributive approach to punish the spam sender using the From address, you'll know why that's a bad idea. Frequently the origination IP addresses aren't of much help, either, since they tend to come from zombie computers (although perhaps not, in your case).

[AdemoS]

To begin with, thanks alot fo the prompt reply, Josh.

I'd never heard of a "Joe-job" though it comicly sounds like some kind of mafia charactistic. It wouldn't make much sense to say I was being targeted, since besides blocking the addresses of spammers through normal methods on my mail service, I haven't done anything specific to anger anyone with the knowlege of how to pull this off. So while I don't doubt that what I am expirencing is a Joe-Job, I'm not so sure it's an act of revenge, simply because of a lack of enemy. (though I suppose I could've overlooked someone or a some group xD)

The SPF you mentioned, sounds far more complicated them I'm able to deal with so, I guess I'll go with your second idea, of just waiting it out.

I already had to set up a couple gmail filters, to catch and automaticlly send to my trash, any address with the word Mail in their name, I of course check for anything I might want before deleteing them but 90% of it is Delievery Failed, or more recently, people applogizing and saying that they require me to be added to be a white list before they can accept mail from me...

So I haven't really gotten ANY angry e-mails...Though interestingly enough, I HAVE gotten some strange ones. Whether or not it's spam, I've been getting SUPPOSED copies of company e-mails. Such as, "I'll be going out for vacation, this is my phone number to contact me." So it could be in that case, was my address was on a huge list of people to be sent phone numbers to bother the company...but again, no idea...I just kinda got used to these kind of e-mails and either filter them, Report Them as spam in gmail. Or just throw em out.

Thanks agian for the quick reply, I guess I'll just have to deal with it till it stops, really werid and hard to explain problem though, since I don't have any obvious enemies, or website to be slandered.