Re: Help: my e-mail address is being spoofed by a spammer! (Summary)

[Kathleen MacDowell <kathleen -at- writefortheuser -dot- com>]

Geoff,

Your report on what happened and how you dealt with it is really
helpful in the event...

Thank you for taking the time!!!

Kathleen

On 1/20/06, Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> wrote:
> Yesterday, I reported that someone swiped my e-mail address and used it
> to spoof the "from:" line of their e-mail headers for a large volume of
> spam, leading to hundreds of e-mail error messages being sent to my
> account. More than 1600 last night alone! (Eek!)
>
> Thanks for all the expressions of sympathy. Consensus is that there's
> not a lot I can do about this unless one of the bounced messages
> contains enough information to track down the spammer and shut 'em
> down. Nothing obvious, but I forwarded some of the more promising
> (complete) ones to my ISP for action.
>
> I also took a closer look at the error messages and found the problem,
> and as it turns out, I was "lucky"*: the spammer used my Web site as
> the source of the spoofed address, and all the error mail was being
> forwarded to my main address (this one) after being handled by the site
> host's e-mail software.
>
> * If it had been either of my primary addresses, I would have been
> blacklisted from here to darkest elbonia, and would have had to change
> e-mail addresses and notify all my friends, colleagues, and contacts.
>
> Solutions? Once I finally got a clue and figured out the problem, I
> immediately notified my site host about the problem, and he disabled
> the e-mail forwarding within minutes. (Thanks, Eric!) That stopped the
> flood of mail in its tracks, at least for the moment. I also notified
> my ISP to ensure that if any complaints arrived, they'd have a report
> on file that I was the victim, not the victimizer. Phew!
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
> Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
> (try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
> www.geoff-hart.com
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
--
Kathleen MacDowell
www.writefortheuser.com
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