Topic: Spammer using my email domain

[Mark]

Recently, I have begun recieving bounced message notifications from various servers. Typically the bounced message is porn or similar. The disturbing thing is the reply-to address in the offending message is mine, and, of course, I did not sent the message.

Perhaps not so coincidentally I have noticed in an increase in the amount of spam I am recieving in general.

I even recieved an angry email telling me to stop spamming.

One interesting point is most of the mailer deamon messages appear to come from AOL.

I apologize for asking what I am certain is a common question: What is an appropriate way to deal with this? All suggestions are welcome.

Thanks, in advance,

 - Mark

[Bill Talcott]

There isn't anything you can do about this, unless you can track down the real spammer and complain to his ISP.

He's doing the equivalent of writing your address as the return address on the envelope of a letter. He's not doing anything to you or via your server, he's simply using a false address.

http://combat.uxn.com/tracing.html has tips for tracing spam. If you want to take the time, you can send the spamees that link and explain to them that he's simply forging your address, and you hate spam as much as they do.

[Ed Form]

Mark wrote:
>
> Recently, I have begun recieving bounced message
> notifications from various servers. Typically the bounced
> message is porn or similar. The disturbing thing is the
> reply-to address in the offending message is mine, and, of
> course, I did not sent the message.
>
> Perhaps not so coincidentally I have noticed in an increase
> in the amount of spam I am recieving in general.
>
> I even recieved an angry email telling me to stop spamming.
>
>
> One interesting point is most of the mailer deamon messages
> appear to come from AOL.
>
> I apologize for asking what I am certain is a common
> question: What is an appropriate way to deal with this? All
> suggestions are welcome.

You might want to download soemthing like LavaSoft Ad-Aware and run it on all your workstations to see what you've picked up.

Ed Form

[Ray]

This is called a "joe job"

[Jim Darrough]

I had this exact thing happen to me last year. I tracked down the idiot's ISP and after threatening them with legal action, they stopped it. You need to find out where it originates, which might be done looking at the full headers, then go to one of the registrars, like Dotster, and use their WHOIS function. That should give you the name, address, and telephone number for the ISP. I even called them several times.

Good luck!