What a **** week

After losing a wad of dosh to a credit card fraudster, some asshole is now
using my domain suffix ) to splatter out shed loads of spam
e mails. You can recognise them from the bit before the @ as it is usually
just a sequence of random characters. Please be assured that this **** is
NOT coming from me.

Has anyone else had the pleasure of having this happen to them ? If so, how
long did it go on for and is there anything you can do to stop it. My domain
host and ISP will probably get ****ed off with it eventually and probably
shut me down. Ho Hum.

--
Ally Maxwell
Well-Tech Computer Centre
www.wcc-ltd.co.uk
---------------------------------------------------------------
Cases, CD Drives, Hard Drives, Memory, Modems, Motherboards,
Multimedia, Networking, Printers, Processors, Scanners, Video Cards.

Buy Securely, Online. www.wcc-ltd.co.uk

I'm having the same problem

Craig

Has anyone else had the pleasure of having this happen to them ? If so, how
long did it go on for and is there anything you can do to stop it. My domain
host and ISP will probably get ****ed off with it eventually and probably
shut me down. Ho Hum.

I`ve had a "similar" experience twice where the email address you see in
the header has been given as the "reply to" and "from" address in spam
mails (forged headers obviously).

IME you`ll see 300+ emails per hour bounced "back" from all the unknown
addresses on the spam lists for ~2 days and then it`ll gradually slow
down over a week or so.

Pain in the ass, but as long as your ISP knows you aren`t the cause there
shouldn`t be too much of a problem.

What I might suggest is a warning on your site to say your email address
is currently under a spam attack and can customers please contact you by
phone for the time being. Less chance of losing custom that way, and
they`ll know you still want their trade (and aren`t ignoring emails,
just that they might get lost in the spam)

If you have specific email addresses ie. sales@ help@ support@ then
perhaps mailwasher can help - there`s a filter (switched off by default)
where you can tell it to mark for deletion any mail not "to" you at any
of the addresses you list.

The recent versions of mailwasher are commercial, and the demo only
supports one email address IIRC, but I have an old beta around that
worked fine 99% of the time (occasional ctrl-alt-del if if threw a hissy
fit) which works fine with multiple accounts. Drop me a line if you need
it !

The email address shown is valid, but for the purposes of spam avoidance
i`m sorely tempted to start filtering anything without a specific word in
the subject (`cos it`s getting silly now, i`m still getting ~150-250 a
day)

Hi Ally,

Had the same problems a few months ago. Someone hi-jacked my domain name
aquila.to ( yes we are in the uk :-) ) and was sending spams as "random
characters" @aquila.to.

For a week I got loads of bounce reports and a few unsubsribe requests,
usually about 200 per day. After a week it all stopped as suddenly as it
started.

It was doubly annoying for me as the week it happened I was on holiday and
was checking emails via a 28.8k modem on a notebook.

Do you think the fraud was connected with the spammer, or was that just a
contribution to the bad week?


Good luck


Richard

_______________________________

www.e-aquila.com

_______________________________


"Well-Tech Computer Centre" wrote in message
...
After losing a wad of dosh to a credit card fraudster, some asshole is now
using my domain suffix ) to splatter out shed loads of
spam
e mails. You can recognise them from the bit before the @ as it is usually
just a sequence of random characters. Please be assured that this **** is
NOT coming from me.

Has anyone else had the pleasure of having this happen to them ? If so,
how
long did it go on for and is there anything you can do to stop it. My
domain
host and ISP will probably get ****ed off with it eventually and probably
shut me down. Ho Hum.

--
Ally Maxwell
Well-Tech Computer Centre
www.wcc-ltd.co.uk
---------------------------------------------------------------
Cases, CD Drives, Hard Drives, Memory, Modems, Motherboards,
Multimedia, Networking, Printers, Processors, Scanners, Video Cards.

Buy Securely, Online. www.wcc-ltd.co.uk

"Well-Tech Computer Centre" wrote in message
...
After losing a wad of dosh to a credit card fraudster,

yep, do you bother reporting it to cops?

The simplest thing to do on newsgroups is to put a dud address in the
From: header but put a valid email address in the Reply-to: header.

I`ve tended to use the email address I use on newsgroups for any iffy
sounding crap i`ve needed on a temporary basis, offers, competition
entries etc. so I suppose it was bound to get out eventually.

Funny how some ISPs suffer far worse than others with spam though - i`ve
been on Pipex since February, and had one solitary spam (which I bounced)
yet my btinternet accounts (2 of), lineone, and virgin accounts are
virtual war zones with spam :-}

In article ,
says...
After losing a wad of dosh to a credit card fraudster, some asshole is now
using my domain suffix ) to splatter out shed loads of spam
e mails. You can recognise them from the bit before the @ as it is usually
just a sequence of random characters. Please be assured that this **** is
NOT coming from me.

Has anyone else had the pleasure of having this happen to them ? If so, how
long did it go on for and is there anything you can do to stop it. My domain
host and ISP will probably get ****ed off with it eventually and probably
shut me down. Ho Hum.

I had exactly the same thing happen to me recently. The bit before the
@dvdfever.. was some random letters, then usually an underscore ("_") and some
more after that.

I was getting about 3000 bounces a day and my mailbox can only handle 2000
messages so important emails weren't getting through sometimes.

My server couldn't help but said that kind of dictionary attack wouldn't last
long. After a week or so I managed to stop the bounces being received by
altering my mail settings on my server to kill everything @dvdfever except
dom@, and a few other specifics. Haven't seen them since and I can add other
prefix specifics if I need to.
--

Dom Robinson Gamertag: DVDfever dom at dvdfever dot co dot uk
/* http://DVDfever.co.uk (editor)
/* 935 DVDs, 258 games, 33 videos, 67 cinema films, 69 CDs, laserdiscs & news
/* tomb raider angel of darkness, hulk, 24, speed kings, hitcher, phone booth
TV Hates U: BBC2 & UK Gold: http://dvdfever.co.uk/pressrel/tvhatesu.shtml
Big Brother 4 - http://dvdfever.co.uk/reviews/bigbro4.shtml

In article , says...
In article subject What a
**** week in uk.adverts.computer on Fri, 25 Jul 2003, Colin Wilson
writes
The email address shown is valid, but for the purposes of spam avoidance
i`m sorely tempted to start filtering anything without a specific word in
the subject (`cos it`s getting silly now, i`m still getting ~150-250 a
day)

The simplest thing to do on newsgroups is to put a dud address in the
From: header but put a valid email address in the Reply-to: header.
Spammers rarely look beyond the From address (as they do not generally
download full article headers), but anyone replying to your article,
with any but the lamest of news/email programs, will automatically get
the genuine address.

I use news.cis.dfn.de and they don't allow a different address in the 'From:'
even if it's for a purpose such as spam-avoidance, which is why I created a
hotmail address for it.

I check it from time to time as some can't see my real address listed in my
sig, but then Hotmail's a victim of their own idiocy the way they let the Junk
Mail box fill up with spam and then claim that's part of the used storage. I
just deleted all mine and it left 1% in the main inbox.
--

Dom Robinson Gamertag: DVDfever dom at dvdfever dot co dot uk
/* http://DVDfever.co.uk (editor)
/* 935 DVDs, 258 games, 33 videos, 67 cinema films, 69 CDs, laserdiscs & news
/* tomb raider angel of darkness, hulk, 24, speed kings, hitcher, phone booth
TV Hates U: BBC2 & UK Gold: http://dvdfever.co.uk/pressrel/tvhatesu.shtml
Big Brother 4 - http://dvdfever.co.uk/reviews/bigbro4.shtml

In article , Dom Robinson
writes

I use news.cis.dfn.de and they don't allow a different address in the 'From:'
even if it's for a purpose such as spam-avoidance, which is why I created a
hotmail address for it.

They don't?

Check my headers
--
No-one

In article subject What a
**** week in uk.adverts.computer on Sat, 26 Jul 2003, Dom Robinson
writes
In article , says...
The simplest thing to do on newsgroups is to put a dud address in the
From: header but put a valid email address in the Reply-to: header.
Spammers rarely look beyond the From address (as they do not generally
download full article headers), but anyone replying to your article,
with any but the lamest of news/email programs, will automatically get
the genuine address.

I use news.cis.dfn.de and they don't allow a different address in the 'From:'
even if it's for a purpose such as spam-avoidance, which is why I created a
hotmail address for it.

I also use news.cis.dfn.de, and they definitely do. They also recommend
as a valid anti spam address, which is what I use as my
From: address

--
John Blundell
Reply-to: address is valid.
Antispam From: address