Receiving did not go thru messages

Ken Lang · Post by **Ken Lang** » 21 Dec 2011 3:39 pm

Around 4 a day. The message you get when you send something and it doesn't go thru. Damon-Mailer type.

I have sent no messages. This is to different people. The same person-whatever-says here is an on line Christmas. I do on line, no more paper because of wasted trees. This is a company card.

I have no idea who it is and why they have my address to send failure notices. Any ideas?

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 21 Dec 2011 5:21 pm

This sounds like backscatter from spam email messages that are sent to non-existent, or no longer used email accounts. Mail servers usually send a bounce message back to the alleged sender, which is the account in the From, or Reply To fields. Spammers falsify these details so that innocent parties receive backscatter messages.

This tells you that your email is being used by spammers. Everybody who sends or receives email will have this happen eventually.

This used to be called a Joe Job.

Ken Lang · Post by **Ken Lang** » 21 Dec 2011 7:35 pm

Out of curiosity, my email is zebadia_1 at xx.
The name on the return is zebadia 1 with the line under the @.

I suppose that makes no difference and I need to give this up and use a different addy?

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 21 Dec 2011 8:20 pm

Ken Lang wrote:Out of curiosity, my email is zebadia_1 at xx.
The name on the return is zebadia 1 with the line under the @.

I suppose that makes no difference and I need to give this up and use a different addy?

I do that occasionally. This doesn't stop spammers from reusing that address. But, it does stop you from receiving the bounces. Unfortunately, if you disable that account with your website, or ISP, the bounces to it will bounce.

Ken Lang · Post by **Ken Lang** » 24 Dec 2011 9:58 pm

I'm still getting bounces to my email of something
someone sent to someone else and it didn't go thru.

So I get it back. Two so far today. My question, if someone else is using my email, I have no proof of it elsewhere.

Is someone doing this to annoy me, and where's the profit in it? Somebody is doing this just to annoy?
He, she, or it cannot reap the awards of doing this, or even see the results. It's stupid.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 25 Dec 2011 11:33 am

It's a Joe Job Ken. Spammers forge email addresses in the From and Reply TO fields of the headers. Then, they use huge networks of compromised computers, known as botnets, to send out mass email blasts, known as spam, to gazillion of recipients. Some of the recipient addresses are no longer valid, or never were (obtained from harvester poisoning scripts).

When spam is sent to an invalid email address, it may bounce back to the From, or Reply To address. Since your and everybody else's email address is forged in spam messages, you will be notified when spam sent forging your account bounces.

If you disable the account that is being forged, you will no longer see those bounces. But, the ISP that is bouncing them will then receive return bounces. This is known as backscatter. It clogs up the email system, to no avail.