My email account being used to spoof?

Mainframeguy

Debiant by way of Ubuntu
Joined
29 Aug 2002
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3,763
during the past week I have been getting the odd returned email, undeliverable. Always with the same subject line ("Undeliverable mail: Äåïàðòàìåíò (044) 5372077 Ðå*êëà*ìû") involving cyrillic letters I guess. Looks like Ukranian domains are exclusively involved. There are attachments - my suspicion is cyrillic spam, because no virii or suchlike seems involved.

I guess I am a little lax with my email, I think i even leave it there on IRC (I can hear some of you tutting) and it has been hoovered up by some spidering spam bot.

My question is not so much what has happened - it looks pretty obvious my email address is being used to spoof and I am getting some come back from spam failures. My question is more what should I do about it, if there si anything I could do? I am worried the answer might be that I should shut down that email account - because that is going to be a major pain to me, it is my primary POP3 account and is used for the majority of my online subscription needs.

I look forward to your feedback - of whatever nature, information is always good to have even if it is the bad news you fear!

[EDIT] I attached also the little partial GIF image file that I can see in IE which makes me pretty sure it is Ukranian spam (though what for I have no idea!) [/EDIT]
 

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in my experice with this there isnt a whole lot you can do. but please correct me if im wrong. As i have several people who would apreciate it hehe.
 
Other than changing your email address I can't think of anything.
 
Unfortunately my e-mail is publicly available on several webpages. There are stretches of time when I will get a thousand of these a day (I assume from one particular round of spamming. But usually its just a hundred or so a day (130 today)

It will only get worse for you :)
 
I agree with mrowton, it will get much worse,,,,,:s
 
That is usually due to someone who has your email address in their contact list/address book, that is compromised with a mass emailing worm. Nothing you can do about it. Some of those Undeliverable Mail emails are actually a virus, in the form of embedded code, that is run when viewed. The most common one I receive is Swen.A
 
If it is a personal address and you expect people who e-mail that address to be live human beings, you could try something like Boxtrapper if you have control over the email server itself. It's a challenge-reply (correct term?) type of system. That is what I have done.
 
Not alot you can do about it. Most mail admins will see its spoofed when they check the spam logs, just give it a few weeks and the mailservers will stop sending bounces out.

I'd offer to host email off of my servers for you that you could forward your current one to, but it has to relearn its spam database all over again so isnt much good a spam filtering just yet. (It'll filter local mail and forwarded mail, etc)

Edit: Just thought - could host mail on the server at the bottom of the stairs if needed, wont be too hard to pick up a domain and point it at it for mail :)
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
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Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

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