On 25 Dec 2005 at 16:00, Jimmy Hughes wrote: > I am getting "Delivery Status Notification (Failure)" notices in my inbox, > showing that my email address is being used (or trying) to send X rated > emails to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" and that it is undeliverable > > "The reason for the problem: > 5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'5.1.1 unknown or illegal alias: > [EMAIL PROTECTED]' " > > Anything I can do about this?
Simply put, "no". What's happening is that some spammer happens to be using your email address as the 'from' [and probably SMTP envelope] address for some of its spam. AFAIK, there's essentially no way even to track down the spammer, much less any way to get them to stop. I get those all the time. In fact, internal addresses at work [that are NEVER used to send email] get them... It is the flip side of receiving email from a dictionary attack.. This is one of the primary reasons why generating 'bounce' messages for spam (which apps like MailWasher will do if you ask it to) is such a bad idea: it essentially turns random mail servers around the world into participants in a third-party distributed mailbomb attack on you. It is hard to filter [since the bounces are legit and won't look any different from *real* bounces you might get for a mistyped address or the like]. Of course, the server can't know this -- unlike with mailwasher where it is generating a gratuitous [and almost wrong] bounce messages, these are legit, SMTP-protocol-called-for bounce messages, and so you'll get them. About the only thing that mostly works is that generally the bounce message includes enough of [if not all of] the original message and if you have a smart enough spam filterer [PopFile has no trouble with this], it'll detect the *bounces* as spam, also and so they won't be much of an issue for you. /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- -- ---------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Is your picture included in the Official Win-Home List Members Profiles Page? http://www.besteffort.com/winhome/Profiles.html If not, write to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
