Email Address Spoofing

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What would happen if someone sent this snail-mail to every address in town,

and put your name and address in the upper left corner of the envelope?

Many of the addresses he sent to would not exist. There might not be a mailbox or even a building at some addresses, or no one lives at some locations anymore, so the post office would return the undeliverable letters to the sender, and your mailbox would overflow with dozens or hundreds of returned letters that you never sent.

This is why you are currently experiencing a lot of bounced email that you never sent. The Spamer, so he wouldn’t get caught or deluged with bounces, has elected to use your email address as the “Spoofed” sender.

How did this Spamer get my email address?

From someone else’s computer. Your email address is most likely in the address-books of friends, family, and others. Several days or weeks before your Spam problem started, one of these other computers got a virus. Some viruses infect a computer and do no damage at all, but they “read” the computer’s address-book and send what they find there back to the person who started the infection. The Spamer may have also harvested your email address from newsletter servers and other sources. Now this person has yours, as well as many other email addresses to send spam to. Not wanting to get caught Spaming, he will then randomly select one of these new email addresses to be his spoofed sender.

Will this hurt my computer, or cause me any other problems?

No. It will not cause any problems in your computer, but may generate a few irate emails to you from recipients of these Spams. Many folks don’t know about spoofing, and will think that you are the actual sender. Either simply ignore them or, if you feel the urge to help them understand spoofing, send them a copy of this FAQ. (Click here, then copy-and-paste the contents of your browser’s address bar into the email you wish to send.)

What can I do about it?

Not too much. The only thing that can be done is to change your email address, and discontinue the use of your old one. This will stop the bounces, at least for a while. Sooner or later your new email address will again end up in the hands of some Spamer somewhere, and you will again get a few of these kinds of bounces.

How long will this keep troubling me?

Not too long. A Spamer seldom sends more than a few hundred-thousand Spams using the same return address, so after a few days, or a week or so, the bounces should dwindle down to nothing.

Just delete the bounces as they arrive, and eventually you’ll quit getting them.

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