They're Using My Own Address To Spam Me

kah22

Hi guys, I run a number of small websites, the main one been for my local writers group.

Because the site encourages people to contact us I have to have an address out there. I also have a few other addressess associated with the site but these are not ones that are used online - I use them for adwords and adsense. In addition I keep an Yahoo address for one off emails for the like of special offers

Anyway over the past number of months I've started to receive emails at my main address, apparently from myself, offering personal services, meds, credit and well the whole gambit of spam.

I can't mark the address as spam because it is my own address, I can't change the address because its my know contact address, and as the address is floating around there in cyberspace I can't very well recall it.

Can anyone tell me how I might stop this type of spam.

I use the free AVG software

Kevin

ivavoucher

SPF

SPF will specify which machines are authorized to send email from your domain(s). This means that only mail sent through this server will appear as valid mail from your domain(s) when the SPF records are checked.

do you have your site hosted with Cpanel?

kah22

ivavoucher wrote: »

SPF

SPF will specify which machines are authorized to send email from your domain(s). This means that only mail sent through this server will appear as valid mail from your domain(s) when the SPF records are checked.

do you have your site hosted with Cpanel?

No, I use Freedom2Surf. They may not be the most efficient out there but that's where all my domains ended up.

ivavoucher wrote: »

SPF

SPF will specify which machines are authorized to send email from your domain(s).

What's SPF?

alanclarke

There is nothing you can do about spamers who already have your email address but to stop new spammers instead of displaying email address on web sites as [EMAIL="abc@xyz.com"]abc@xyz.com[/EMAIL] use 'MailTo Protector' - www.mailtoprotector.com

MailTo Protector encodes the mailto link information. This means that when spam-bots try to harvest email addresses from your web page, virtually none of them can read the addresses resulting in a great decrease in the amount of spam you receive.

People who click your email link can still see your email address but it should stop spam-bots.

There is a free online version which gives a tagline at bottom of email that user sends or you can buy a software version to remove the tagline, currently US$19.95.

omen666

alternatively break up tyour mail address

firstname.surname @domain.com

FreheitOverture

kah22 wrote: »

What's SPF?

SPF is not as useful as it could be. Basically as ivavoucher says it specifies that you have to be actually logged on to your server to send an email from that address (instead of just writing any address in the From: field)

However not all servers pay attention to the SPF record rendering it a little bit useless.

Unfortunately there really isnt anything you can do apart from change your email address

basmic

This is the point where I recommend MailWasher (link). I've used MailWasher for ages, and basically it stops spams before it gets to your inbox.

Why not block your own email address, BTW? Are you planning to send yourself a lot of emails?

bob_a_builder

As someone has suggested you need to encode the email address on the web page so its not easliy harvested
you can usually pop in a bit of javascript to do this for you or encode it

Here is a free site which will do that for you, no doubt many others

LINK

Also bear in mind if you have any 'html' forms on the site they can be compromised in a similar way by them harvesting the "action=xxxxxxxx" i.e. target page, and then they flood that with spam form submissions

Use a similar technique to mask the target page address

usignuolo

I have an email address in the form [EMAIL="firstname.lastname@serviceprovider.com"]firstname.lastname@serviceprovider.com [/EMAIL]for a long time now. This format does not offer any protection against being stolen by spammers. (I haven't tried it with an underscore in the centre - has anyone else?)

Over the years I have posted comments to innocuous websites. Some of these turn up on the web out of context and get harvested by robots. For example I made a couple of comments in the forum section of a small sports club of which I am a member, about the election of a new chairman. it was posted to the main website of the sport by someone else, and 10 years later it is still out there on the web.

There are several similar instances and my name has been harvested by robots and is I imagine, on lists of valid email addresses passed around by spammers. At first I was annoyed to find my name used by the spammers but there is nothing I can do about it. Now I just ignore it.

On a more positive side, my service provider has really clamped down on the mass mailers recently and there is a lot less spam with my name circulating. But there is nothing you can do to stop these people when the stuff is coming out of places like Russia. Grin and bear it.

savemoney

I have a email address (ISP) which I rarely give out at all. I use about 5 other emails address gmail/hotmail for this. I have had that email address for around 3+ years now

Over the last few months my ISP email address has been bombarded with emails which appear to be from me, obviously that is not the case.

I very much doubt the pc has been compromised, I use mailwasher, firewall/av (trend) and scan frequently for mailware with superantispyware

kah22

savemoney wrote: »

Over the last few months my ISP email address has been bombarded with emails which appear to be from me, obviously that is not the case.

savemoney, that's my main problem getting emails which appear from me but not quite obviously not from me - have you figured a way to defeat this other than blocking your own address.

As a matter of interest I use 0spam (zero) it's free and easy to set up.Check it out HERE. It does deal with the vast majority of spam that I get and you can keep adding address to block, though spammers do seem to change their address very regularly.

Kevin