Someone is sending bogus e-mails from my address - how can I stop it?

BrokeBrunette

I'd really appreciate some advice please.
I keep getting e-mails returned to me, I've listed some of the return messages below because there are lots of different ones!

Delivery Status Notification (failure) content violation
Returned Mail: see transcript for details
Mail Delivery Failed - message returned to sender

The problem is that I haven't sent any of them! I'm getting at least 10 a day sent back to me and I haven't a clue how to stop them being sent from my e-mail address as I have no idea of the content of these messages. Some of them are also coming back in a foreign language.

This seems to have started since I had a spyware/malware problem a couple of weeks ago, which was completely sorted out thanks to some of the lovely techie people on here. Do you think this is connected and what can I do to stop this?

Lorian

You won't be the only one. Seems there is a new wave of these in the last day or two.

The best preventive measure against someone faking your address on their outbound spam is to set up an SPF

"SPF allows the owner of an Internet domain to use special format of DNS TXT records to specify which machines are authorized to transmit e-mail for that domain. For example, the owner of the example.org domain can designate which machines are authorized to send e-mail whose e-mail address in the Return-Path ends with "@example.org". Receivers checking SPF can then reject any e-mail that claims to come from that domain, but fails in a check against the IPs listed in the sender policy of this domain."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework

This saves me a lot of typing. Ask your ISP/Email provider if they have an SPF on the domain your use for mail. It's not perfect, but it'll stop you getting so many bounce messages.

Don't forget many of the original payploads will have ads, viruses and other undesirable payloads so don't go getting tempted to click on the attachements.

Lorian

I should add, my ISP Plusnet have just realised SPF is a good idea (after some campaigning!) and it's on their list of things to implement.

BrokeBrunette

Lorian wrote:

You won't be the only one. Seems there is a new wave of these in the last day or two.

The best preventive measure against someone faking your address on their outbound spam is to set up an SPF

"SPF allows the owner of an Internet domain to use special format of DNS TXT records to specify which machines are authorized to transmit e-mail for that domain. For example, the owner of the example.org domain can designate which machines are authorized to send e-mail whose e-mail address in the Return-Path ends with "@example.org". Receivers checking SPF can then reject any e-mail that claims to come from that domain, but fails in a check against the IPs listed in the sender policy of this domain."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework

This saves me a lot of typing. Ask your ISP/Email provider if they have an SPF on the domain your use for mail. It's not perfect, but it'll stop you getting so many bounce messages.

Don't forget many of the original payploads will have ads, viruses and other undesirable payloads so don't go getting tempted to click on the attachements.

thanks for the link. My ISP is Tesco Broadband but I have a personal domain e-mail address, bought for me as a present. I've no idea how it all works so does this mean I need to contact Tesco, or the company issuing me with the domain e-mail address I have? I'm using Outlook Express if that makes a difference.

Sorry to be an idiot, but I have no idea how my domain e-mail address even connects to my Tesco one.

Lorian

You need to talk to the company where your domain is registered. You may just be able to set up your SPF record with your mailserver in their domain setup web page/control panel. Say the domain company someone might know.

Bear in mind SPF won't stop the spammer sending the emails out with your forged name, but it should allow many of the reciepient mail servers to realise its spam and dump it rather than to reply to you.

There is nothing you can do to stop them sending emails using your domain name, other than munge it anywhere you use it publicly.

BrokeBrunette

the company is called LCN (Low Cost Names). I'll try to have a look and see if I can do anything via their website. I can't believe that people can just send e-mails from someone elses address. It's crazy!!!

Alltheloginsaretakenappar

When this first happened to me a few years ago I was in a panic that someone had hijacked my email account. But it turned out that they just fake the 'sent from email address' and a for a few days it happened to be my hotmail address. This has happened a couple of times now and I haven't needed to do anything as they just stop. Although I have had a few people email me about receiving spam from me so I've just emailed back to explain it wasn't me.

krishna

Happened to me too. I got thrown off freecyclelondon because it happened (once only too!). Most of the time they are using an non-existent email address. i.e. the bit before the @ is not a real address. So I have just changed the settings on my domain to reject any email addressed to a non-existent account. That seems to have stopped them appearing in my inbox, though they are probably still getting sent out.

shelly

krishna wrote:

Happened to me too. I got thrown off freecyclelondon because it happened (once only too!). Most of the time they are using an non-existent email address. i.e. the bit before the @ is not a real address. So I have just changed the settings on my domain to reject any email addressed to a non-existent account. That seems to have stopped them appearing in my inbox, though they are probably still getting sent out.

Thanks for the advice, I'll see if hubby can do the same for me. I get about 100+ a week of these e-mails where the name before the @ is wrong. He just told me not to reply to any of them as then they will know that the e-mail adress is an active one.

BrokeBrunette

thanks for the advice everyone. I visited my domain name site last night and deleted the 'catch all' option, so that only my proper e-mail address gets replied to. I'm hoping this might stop me getting loads of undelivered mail back to me.

richt71

BrokeBrunette wrote:

the company is called LCN (Low Cost Names). I'll try to have a look and see if I can do anything via their website. I can't believe that people can just send e-mails from someone elses address. It's crazy!!!

Unless they have your login ID and password it'll just be a faked to look like your email address.