[Dixonary] Brief off-topic question

[Dodi Schultz]

I apologize in advance, but so many of you are so knowledgeable (and
there's NO traffic at all at the general-chat TFFKAT group, and Paul won't
be posting the new list of defs for another few hours):

There's been, over the past year, quite a bit of "can't deliver your
message" stuff from places to which I've never sent messages; content
usually unspecified, but sometimes obviously pill-peddling or porn. Yes,
forged return addresses, of course. The last two days, it's been something
of a deluge; there were a dozen in the batch of mail I picked up from my
mailbox this morning.

Is there anything one can do about that? (Short of changing one's address,
that is.) Anyone to report it to?

--Dodi

[Dan in Saint Louis]

Is there anything one can do about that?
I would suggest asking here:
http://www.tapcis.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=18

[Chris Carson]

Dodi,

I've gotten a number of those myself and I think that a lot of them are a
variation on the phishing scam. The sender is trying to induce the receiver
to open the attached "undeliverable" message which really is a file that
contains a trojan or malware. My spam filter catches most of those and the
rest I delete without opening. As far as notifying, I doubt that there's
much that can be done since the messages have spoofed headers and the
underlying source information is probably offshore.

Chris

From: "Dodi Schultz"

> There's been, over the past year, quite a bit of "can't deliver your
> message" stuff from places to which I've never sent messages; content
> usually unspecified, but sometimes obviously pill-peddling or porn. Yes,
> forged return addresses, of course. The last two days, it's been something
> of a deluge; there were a dozen in the batch of mail I picked up from my
> mailbox this morning.
>
> Is there anything one can do about that? (Short of changing one's address,
> that is.) Anyone to report it to?
>

[Toni Savage]

No, it's just like any other spam... it comes from
someplace, and you can try to report it to the domain
admin, but don't hold your breath.

You're lucky you're still on Compuserve TAPCIS. If
you open the messages any other way, you're open to
viruses (the "no content" ones usually are
virus-laden)

It's astounding how creative these folks are at
getting you to open mail. I got one this morning from
"Tsavage"....

--- Dodi Schultz <schultz (AT) compuserve (DOT) com> wrote:

>
> I apologize in advance, but so many of you are so
> knowledgeable (and
> there's NO traffic at all at the general-chat TFFKAT
> group, and Paul won't
> be posting the new list of defs for another few
> hours):
>
> There's been, over the past year, quite a bit of
> "can't deliver your
> message" stuff from places to which I've never sent
> messages; content
> usually unspecified, but sometimes obviously
> pill-peddling or porn. Yes,
> forged return addresses, of course. The last two
> days, it's been something
> of a deluge; there were a dozen in the batch of mail
> I picked up from my
> mailbox this morning.
>
> Is there anything one can do about that? (Short of
> changing one's address,
> that is.) Anyone to report it to?
>
> --Dodi
>


-- Toni Savage

[Guerri Stevens]

Dodi, I thought that when you got an "undeliverable" message back that
you had never sent, it usually meant that someone had somehow collected
YOUR Email address by grabbing info from someone else's address list and
then using your address to send Email, hence the Email that was sent
would bounce back to you.

FWIW, today I got a fraudulent message, supposedly from my Internet
provider. It scared me at first because the title was "your service is
about to be discontinued" or something like that, then I realized what
it was. When I called my provider, the initial recording said "many of
our customers are getting fraudulent Emails...".

Guerri

[Toni Savage]

Yeah... ebay and PayPal members get such messages all
the time ("your account will be suspended...") and
the "undeliverable" spoof is becoming more and more
common. They REALLY look like undelivered email
messages!

Another thing they do to in-house domains (like ours
at queueassoc.com) is to spoof something like,
"Administrator (AT) abcdef (DOT) com" and tell people to reset
their passwords to a particular word.

Soooooo clever!!

--- Guerri Stevens <guerri (AT) tapcis (DOT) com> wrote:

> Dodi, I thought that when you got an "undeliverable"
> message back that
> you had never sent, it usually meant that someone
> had somehow collected
> YOUR Email address by grabbing info from someone
> else's address list and
> then using your address to send Email, hence the
> Email that was sent
> would bounce back to you.
>
> FWIW, today I got a fraudulent message, supposedly
> from my Internet
> provider. It scared me at first because the title
> was "your service is
> about to be discontinued" or something like that,
> then I realized what
> it was. When I called my provider, the initial
> recording said "many of
> our customers are getting fraudulent Emails...".
>
> Guerri
>
>


-- Toni Savage

[Tim Bourne]

In article
<20050725213441.44751.qmail (AT) web50502 (DOT) mail.yahoo.com>, Toni
Savage wrote:
> They REALLY look like undelivered email
> messages!
>
Some of them are real. Over the past few weeks I've had
thousands of these undeliverable messages sent to
non-existent addresses at my domain. The first part of the
address is a random sequence of letters, and they are
obviously spoofed, but they are genuine messages sent by
someone else but with a made-up address at my domain as the
apparent source. This is really annoying!

Tim B