spammers hijacked email address/url

They have: 140 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

I have been getting emails sent to me from bogus email addresses using my url.

They make up a prefix and then add my url to it and send it out.... I'm sure to thousands if not millions. The email masks a spam message.

It is degrading the value of my site.

How do I:

1.) Stop it
2.) Find out who is doing it and get them arrested and fined.

??

He has: 1,758 posts

Joined: Jul 2002

1) You can't. Email is inherently insecure. I could email you right now from [email protected] without any special software. You can however stop the bounce backs by turning off your catchall (wildcard) email alias and only receive emails to the specific addresses you actually use.

2) I doubt you could catch them. Most spammers that use these kind of tactics spread their junk via thousands of remote zombie machines (computers infected with trojans).

In my job I have to deal with this question on a daily basis. It's a sad fact, but email is just not a good enough solution for our electronic mail needs any longer. We need a better solution and old school email needs to be stopped - it'll be a huge transition but it would be worth it for a world without spam!

Andy

They have: 140 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

That's very discouraging. Got some more in my mailbox this morning.

I had 42 spam emails and 2 real emails.

What can be done about this? You sound like you might have an idea and I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Thanks

They have: 68 posts

Joined: Dec 2006

Therec was an article in our edition giving some tips on this issue.One of this is that we can find the source of such emails. The link given by them is

http://www.missing.com/traceroute.html

http://www.traceroute.org

http://www.cauce.org

http://www.caube.org.au

http://www.lesbell.com.au/Home.nsf/web/tracing%20Emails?OpenDocument

http://www.usus.org?elements/tracing.htm

I have not visited those websites, but will have a try after some time.

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