Someone is using my email address

27cool

Recently I have been receiving literally 100's of Delivery Status Notifications about emails that have been sent from my email address. Most of these are in Russian. Some are in French and Spanish also. The whole exercise seems pointless as none of the emails are getting delivered. All that happens is that I get probably up to 75 notifications a day. I don't really want to shut this address down. But is this the only way I can stop it. By getting a new email address.
What the hell is going on? Any suggestions gratefully received.

pappa_golf

how about going to its settings and changing the password

Lorian

Its probably backscatter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_(email)

cookie365

You don't need to change your password. It's easy to spoof the sent by email address.

The problem is the stupid ISPs and companys sending the failure notifications to the spoofed address.

Most email clients will filter these out as spam. How do you collect your mail?

bouicca21

Have you checked for a virus?

andygb

Sounds like spoofing to me.
Someone hacks your email and then sends loads of emails to all your contactas/friends.
Happened to me years ago, and even now some of my "freinds" won't speak to me because of the emails which they were sent - idiots.

agrinnall

Here's a working link for Backscatter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_(email)

AndyPix

andygb wrote: »

Sounds like spoofing to me.
Someone hacks your email and then sends loads of emails to all your contactas/friends.
Happened to me years ago, and even now some of my "freinds" won't speak to me because of the emails which they were sent - idiots.

Spoofing yes - Hacked email, probly not ..


Some spammer software has picked up your email address from somewhere, and has decided to use this as the "from" address in its outgoing email.
When these messages are rejected by the recieving mail server as spam, because the SPF record wont match the ip address that the email is coming from , Its you who get the "undeliverable" reply.


Just delete and ignore them, it will stop soon.


Andy

27cool

The problem with deleting them is that sometimes I am getting up to 70 a day. It's all getting a bit tedious.
Thanks for your inputs. At least I now know what is happening.

Lorian

Depending on what/who your anti-spam provider is it might be possible to configure to ignore it.

dobymicks

You should be able to enable SPF record for your domain name in your hosting control panel.
The SPF system allows you to specify servers and IP addresses that are authorized to send mail from your domain(s). This feature works to prevent outgoing spam messages.
Also avoid using catch-all email addresses as these help facilitate spoofing of your domain.