Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Email impersonation?

I've been getting a lot of "bounce back" messages (undeliverable email) from sites to which I have not sent any mail. The sites include Michael Ruppert's, Rense, and something called "Right Turns." (I did once write to Rense, but that was quite a few months ago.) The returned messages are filled with code -- signifying either a virus or an image file. I am not sending this stuff out. If some creep is spoofing my email address, I'm not sure what to do.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

E-mails aren't always what they seem. I've gotten supposed messages from the administration of sites where I was the administration. I don't remember sending myself these messages. :)

If you keep getting this spam you might want to try a mail filtering program such as popfile (popfile.sourceforge.net).-- chemoelectric.org

Anonymous said...

Most likely, someone is using your email address as a phony sender -- the intent is to make spam look legitimate to the receiver. I had a herbal penile enlargement company using my email address(!), and I got dozens of returned emails. (Anybody can enter any email address in the sender field, it's got no legal force.)

What you need to do is examine the header of these returned emails, and try to find out who the sender is. If it's a commercial site, you can try to contact them, and ask them to cease and desist.

Otherwise, there probably isn't much you can do.

Anonymous said...

The problem he is having occurs because *someone else* has a virus. So his buying a Mac would be a complete waste of time!

Coconut Clapping Party said...

I have this problem too. I get messages bounced back from zxrt@mydomain.co.uk - obviously not a real address, but I have a redirect on all mail to mydoman so i get the bouncebacks.

I also get junk mail sent to info@mydomain.co.uk, admin@mydomain.co.uk and stuff like that.

I figure a worm has somehow stumbled on my domain in someone's bookmarks and is now not only spamming me as admin but also sending fake emails in my name.

I figure the problem exists on someone else's computer. I've tracked an IP# to a computer in Isreal, I've never even mailed anyone in Isreal so far as I know.

It's just one of those things. I'm just waiting for the person in Isreal to figure out they have the worm and deal with the problem. I doubt contacting their ISP will do much good, it's not as if ISPs can delete accounts of everyone who has a worm on their machine, else about half the internet population would disappear overnight.

I guess I should be flattered someone wanted to bookmark my site.