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[Taxi_Driver]

For the last 2 weeks im getting loads of bounced emails sent back to me.....that ive never sent!

Some low life seems to be using one of my domainnames as the the 'sent from' address to send spam.

As a result my mailbox is filling up with sometimes 10-20 bounced emails a day from mail severs returning the mail to my domain name and since anything@mydomainname is redirected to my mailbox...i get them  

Not sure how to stop them coming....Any ideas?  :-/

[MikeDundee]

Not an expert on the subject TD, but would suggest changing the domain name

[iggy21uk]

Had the same problem
My hosting provider said it not possible to stop.

Also said the emails being sent to me not failed just made to look like that
so I would open then.

I had a "catchall" e-mail address. Closed that, it has all but stopped.

[Markjay]

You are referring to 'mail spoofing', where spammers use email addresses of incorrect users as the sender's email address. When the message is correctly diagnosed as spam or virus by the recipient server (or if the users no longer exist), the recipient server will issue a rejection message to the apparent sender, i.e. you… so you get rejection messages for emails you never sent in the first place.

Basically, when a PC running Outlook is compromised, the spammers little bot will collect the email addresses stored in the Contact List and will use them both as recipients and as fake senders.
This is due to an small oversight by the people that originally set-up the Internet – they didn’t think someone would want to send an email using fake email address…

There have been several proposals for formats that require authentication before a message is received, but this is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. For now, there is no way you can prevent someone else from sending an email using your email address as the sender’s address…

[Martin_1962]

Examine the bounced emails carefully - sometimes there are genuine return or link details, from those work out who the spam is sent on behalf of and take it from there.

It is surprising what can be there as a lot of spam is for real companies behind the illegal emails, but leaving the contact email address of the company was a huge mistake.

You can get everyone you know to send them gigbytes of crap, my work email address was used like this, we are on broadband so I sent about 100MB of wash files (full of nulls) to their email address a lot of times - never happened again with my email address.

Since it is not your email address use a Hotmail throwaway!!!!

I am not recommending DOS as that is more illegal than spamming but can work, nor am I recommending digging until you find a director of the company and paying a midnight visit. However this technique does work with trolls when one of their victims is given the home address of the troll

Just remember what goes around comes around

Russian Spammer Executed
And here

[Taxi_Driver]

Bit difficult to change domainname.....its one ive had for years and like it.....orig bought it...with the hope that someone else would want and offer dosh for it.....its a play on toysrus but obviously the toys bit is different.

I therefore need the catch all emails to the domain as if someone did want it i probably wouldnt get the email  

Before anyone asks i bought the domain name before any company was registered at Companies House with the same name....

[Kevin Wood]

One thing that MIGHT help is to have a word with whoever is hosting the domain on your behalf and ask if they have SPF records enabled.

SPF allows a receiving mail server to lookup your domain and find out if the sender is authorised to send mail on behalf of that domain. You set up the records to show that your ISPs mail servers are OK, and anything else is not, so a receiving server should reject the mail without a bounce if the SPF doesn't authenticate the sender.

You still rely on the server at the receiving end which has to check this, so it won't stop it 100% but it ought to stop bounces from reputable organisations and ISPs.

Kevin

[Markjay]

One thing that MIGHT help is to have a word with whoever is hosting the domain on your behalf and ask if they have SPF records enabled.

SPF allows a receiving mail server to lookup your domain and find out if the sender is authorised to send mail on behalf of that domain. You set up the records to show that your ISPs mail servers are OK, and anything else is not, so a receiving server should reject the mail without a bounce if the SPF doesn't authenticate the sender.

You still rely on the server at the receiving end which has to check this, so it won't stop it 100% but it ought to stop bounces from reputable organisations and ISPs.

Kevin

Indeed - I did not go into it in detail because very few servers seem to be using SPF..

[Taxi_Driver]

Thanks for the replies guys  

Some interesting stuff to look into there  

I have opened a few of them and looked at the headers but at the moment nothing is consistent on where they originated from  

[Kevin Wood]

Indeed - I did not go into it in detail because very few servers seem to be using SPF..

I'm not really aware of how widespread it is, was just aware of it as a possibility. My domain doesn't have SPF and I have no problems at present, so clearly not many destinations require it, but I do wonder how many mail servers are configured to use it if it's present on a domain.

I have opened a few of them and looked at the headers but at the moment nothing is consistent on where they originated from

The problem is, if someone's spamming using your address as an alias, you will get bounces from all over the place as systems reject the mail. It's a real pain.

Are the mails only going to one or two addresses within the domain? You could change your active e-mail address slightly and set up your mail client to bin / move to spam folder anything that comes in on the old address?

If you're recieving all mail for the domain you will get loads of spam on the easily guessable addresses like sales@..., etc.

Kevin

[Taxi_Driver]

Are the mails only going to one or two addresses within the domain? You could change your active e-mail address slightly and set up your mail client to bin / move to spam folder anything that comes in on the old address?

If you're recieving all mail for the domain you will get loads of spam on the easily guessable addresses like sales@..., etc.

Kevin

The bit before the @ just seems to be random......as explained earlier i need to catch all the emails for the domain.

I put up with junk mailed sent to my domain.......and thats usually quite a bit  
But just concerned with the bounces from other mail servers sending the spam junk mail back to me.
As far as i know.....mail servers put up with it a bit but if it keeps happening your domainname gets blacklisted by mailservers....and if this happens I wont be able to send emails using the doaminname