Someone needs to get a severe beating, Joe Pesci style.
Last night, I get maybe 50 “bounce” messages for email I did not send. Opening one of the bounces, it is clear that someone put my email addess in the from: field in their fucking spam.
You flaming bag of leprous donkey jizz. You congealed phlegm-lump floating on a sea of boiling ebola-monkey shit. How the fuck dare you?
And to add insult to injury, I decide it would be best to inform the postmaster of my provider, in case they think I actually sent this shit. (I’m pretty sure my machine wasn’t hijacked, I keep up to date on my virus scanner and regularly scan with ad-aware and spybot).
So, I forward a bunch of the bounce messages to postmaster@adelphia.net, and I get the following bounce message:
It’s happened to me once or twice. Since they didn’t hijack my mail server or anything, I don’t think anyone with a modicum of knowledge about computers would think my computer actually sent out all those emails offering breast size enhancements.
Of course, we were the ones getting all the hate mail from people who got the damn messages. Annoying.
I’m sorry I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses:
Undelivered to [some random email address I’ve never heard of]"
I DID have a worm on my computer, but it’s gone now, and I have ZoneAlarm up and protecting me from intrusions (which I was apparently getting before). Dunno what to make of it, but could be some new scheme.
They don’t have to get your email address from anywhere on your system - they could’ve grabbed it from another poor soul’s email address book or outbox.
They probably just got it from one of those “millions of email addresses” list. I already get a lot of spam at that address; now they are likely using addresses from the list not just as a destination, but to hide their tracks too. Bastards.
Yep, sounds like a joe job. Contact your ISP, if you use only one computer to access your mail, they can track your IP address and attempt to trace any other people who are accessing the box. If they’re a responsive ISP, there are some things they can do. But a determined spammer can usually easily get around them, but a road block or two might be enough to convince them that it ain’t wirth the trouble.
I had this happen in August. I was in the hospital for a week with meningitis and, when I returned home, my email box was full of those bounced email notices. I changed my password and they stopped but I got hate mail for 2 weeks afterward.
I doubt if they actually used my mailbox, I think they simply put my address in the FROM: field. They may not have even put the address in the REPLY-TO, I haven’t got any hate mail or anything. But this could be simply because people now simply delete spam and don’t bother to reply and curse out the sender anymore. I did change my POP password, just to be safe.
