i open my email this morning and see a message with the title “Mail System Error-Returned Mail.” I’ve seen this type of message before, when ever i send an email and something’s wrong with the address or something like that. I thought it was odd, since i hadn’t sent out any email for about a week. i thought it was even more odd when the receipient of this undeliverable mail was an email address i didn’t recognize.
At this point, i’m beginning to wonder if someone had accessed my account (this is hotmail i’m talking about), so i change my password, then i go back to the email and start studying it a little better. i notice that at the end, a copy of the email i “sent” is included. so here’s what’s been coming from my email account lately…
THESE HORNY AMATEURS WILL DO ALMOST ANYTHING!
FEATURING THE ALREADY INTERNET FAMOUS “MANDY CAM”, LIVE FROM HER BEDROOM WEBCAM! YOU WON’T BELIEVE HOW HOT THIS CHICK IS!!
NO CREDIT CARD NEEDED!! CLICK HERE!
what
the
FUCK
someone is using my email account to send out spam??? and it’s porn spam no less!!!
the really bad thing is, this isn’t my acconav account i’m talking about. this is the account that has my real name in it, that i use for talking to friends, family, basically just people i know in real life. this is the email address that’s on my resume for christ’s sake!!!
god damn. god fucking damn. i’m so pissed right now. i sent an email to the hotmail staff alerting them to this abuse, but now there’s nothing i can do.
fuck.
acconav, I know that it looks really bad. However, I’m pretty sure that the message that they sent you really DIDN’T come fron your account. They probably just wanted to get you to open it, and, in order to ensure that you did, made it so that it looked like you were getting an email returned to you. I get this all the time on my AOL account. Since you’re apparently using one of the larger email providers (Hotmail), they might even have copied the individual style of the “not sent out” form that you’d be used to seeing.
You know, I wonder how many people actually go to the sites advertized in this manner. My reaction is usually more along the lines of “eh, fuck you…”
Actually this did happen to me once. And it really DID send from my AOL account/screen name.
Someone stole my password and send smut mail. I didn’t know it until the people started responding to it and telling me how gross of a person I was.
I deleted the screen name and changed the passwords on all my others. Then I sent all of the e-mails to AOL TOS along with an explanation of what happened and what I did to rectify it, so that they could handle it.
*This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason: Each of the following recipients was rejected by a remote mail server.
The reasons given by the server are included to help you determine why
each recipient was rejected.
Recipient: <xxxxxx@hotmail.com>
Reason: Requested action not taken:user account inactive
Reporting-MTA: dns; mailserver.netlines.net
Received-From-MTA:dns; oemcomputer (216.78.229.175)
Arrival-Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 02:24:59 -0800
Remote-Recipient: rfc822;<xxxxxx@hotmail.com>
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;551
SMTP-Deliver:BadRecipients
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.6
Remote-MTA: DNS;mc7.law13.hotmail.com
Last-Attempt-Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 02:25:00 -0800*
then, at the bottom of this error message, they included the email i supposedly sent, which i already posted in the OP
i suppose it’s possible this was a scam to get me to open the spam, but if it was it’s not a very good one. i had to read it twice before i saw the spam portion of it.
Does Hotmail have a “sent mail” folder that saves e-mails you’ve sent out? If it does, check there and see if there’s a copy of this e-mail you supposedly sent out sitting there. If not, what probably happened is what Angel of the Lord suggested. If there is, yeah, you’ve got a problem and you need to deal with Hotmail for a security issue. Also, if someone’s been sending smut mail from your account, there should be copies of any other e-mails sent out in your “sent mail” folder. Unless, of course, the fucktard responsible for hacking into your account was smart enough to delete things from your sent mail folder, in which case you’re SOL as far as I know.
Anyone can put any address as their return address. Got Outlook Express? Try it. You’ll find you can list your return address as dubya@whitehouse.gov if you’re so inclined.
These porn spammers are smart enough to know that they’re going to cop undeliverables bouncing and then abusive emails from the people they spammed, so they don’t use a real return address. Why do they need one? They just put any old garbage @Hotmail in the return line. What do they care if it’s a real address?
These days, malicious spammers use the real email addresses of anti-spammers or other people they dislike as their return address. Then they send out the filthiest, most aggrevating porn spam they can come up with. Result: hundreds of complaints to the email host, thousands of abusive replies to the anti-spammer’s address, hundreds of bounce messages. It take a while to clean up the mess when they do this. It’s called a “Joe Job”, because http://www.joes.com was an early and “famous” victim of this type of attack.
If I may interrupt, I have a different but I hope easily solveable problem.
I just got a new laptop this weekend (my first) and signed up for the free MSN for a year (what can I say, I’m a tramp for free Internet service). MSN apparently set me up with a hotmail account, though I didn’t ask them to do so and would like to use another account as my primary one. This hotmail account – which I’ve had for two days – has presented me with no less than ten offers to view hot naked young sluts, if such were my inclination, which it ain’t. I have not sent ONE e-mail from that account, so I presume they are monitoring new account set-ups and adding them to some porn send list. For obvious reasons, this pisses me off. Can I get rid of the porn spam, short of closing the account? Can I close the account? If I use MSN as my Internet service, do I have to use them for e-mail?
Anyone scoffing at how easy these questions may be should not under-estimate how ignorant I am about computers and computer services; indeed, it would be hard to over-estimate that.
It’s a common misconception that Hotmail sell your email address to spammers. They don’t. Spammer send their crap to random combinations of letters and numbers. The only way to aviod getting spammed is to make your MSN user name/email address complex.
Thus, freddie@hotmail will cop tons of spam, freddie56@hotmail will cop tons of spam, but f56reddie56@hotmail probably won’t get spammed. Scatter the last 4 digits of your SS number, or your birthdate throughout your email address (MSN user name), and you’ll reduce the spam you get.
Also consider that if you don’t access your account for 60 days, they delete it. Then other people can sign up and get your old account name. If you’ve signed up for something that someone else once had, chances are they’ve used it on the net and it’s been harvested by spammers. I signed up for an account along the line of janesmith71, and got emails from a girl who thought the account still belonged to her friend Jane. I signed up for another account along the lines of j1971m1234s, and it’s never had any spam. It’s a complex address, but I don’t plan to hand it out - I use it to send occasionally, and since people are replying, they don’t need to write it down (they can just hit ‘Reply’).
Good idea to randomize, bad idea to use SSN or birthday or any other personal information. While the liklihood of tracking you down based on a partial SSN or DOB is low, it still exists so don’t make it any easier.
Well, if they cannot or will not protect my account from random spammers, then I don’t need to have an account with them. I have never encountered this problem with any other e-mail provider, and since I don’t need the account, I’m not willing to put up with it. So can I close the account myself and use another account as my primary one for MSN? Or does MSN require you to use Hotmail?
I’ve had a hotmail account for about a year now and I haven’t gotten any spam on it yet. Hotmail has a junk mail filter you can play with. Just go to options and it’s right there. Have fun.
thanks, everybody. i’ve cooled off quite a bit, and now i’ve got some hope that the email wasn’t legit. i haven’t heard from the people at hotmail yet (and probably never will) so thanks to everybody for your input
Hey, acconav, if it makes you feel any better, I just realized that it is the EXACT message that showed up in MY inbox yesterday too. I know becauswe I remember that mc7.law13 line. I didn’t catch the pornspam at the end though. I guess I wasn’t looking closely enough. Like you, though, I was trying to figure what I had sent out that got rejected. But when I realized the address I supposedly mailed to was nothing I’d heard of (there are only a handful or 2 of friends I use the account for corresponding with on a regular basis, so it’s a pretty simple matter), I hit delete.
So aparently I’m a pornspammer too. Funny, I dont FEEL smutty yet…
Oh in a semi-related story, I was surfing around late last night and realized that I needed to update my address at columbiahouse. so I typed in the website and instead of the usual “Get 12 CD’s for just a penny!” pitch I get a blue screen with the “This website contains graphic sexual depictions…” speil, along with the “I agree” and “I decline” links. What the hay? A porn site? Or has columbiahouse just been doing some MAJOR site redesign? Well I figured it was the former and took a closer look at the address. Sure enough I had typed in colunbiahouse instead of colubiahouse. That made all the difference. Yes, I know that porn sites use the practice of setting up sites with addresses very close to a popular site with the hopes that youll mistype and end up there, but I dont think I’d fallen victim to that ruse until yesterday. I think it’s pretty darn slimy.
