Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

[shivvy]

Recently I have been receiving emails saying "Delivery Status Notification (Failure)" referring to email addresses that I don't know - and haven't been trying to email.
When they come into my inbox there are nearly always 5 or 6 at at time.

Can anyone let me know why this happens and what I should do?

Thanks.

[Buenchico]

Spammers use software to collect email addresses from the internet. They also use software to guess at email addresses, such as [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc).

They then send spam to all of those addresses. However, in order to make their spam messages look as if they've come from a real person, they also use their list of email addresses to complete the 'return address' fields in their emails.

A spammer has entered your address into the 'return address' field of some of the mail he's been sending out. Since many of the addresses he will have sent mail to won't actually exist (because they were only software-generated 'guesses'), you'll get all of the 'bounce' messages from those mail attempts..

Chris

[squarebear]

You are lucky to only have 5 or 6. A spammer once used my email address and I was receiving 5000 delivery reports a day!

There is nothing you can do apart from wait until they choose another email user to send from or get a new email address.

[jake-the-peg]

This is known as a Joe Job

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job

There is not much you can do about it I'm afraid
http://articles.sitep...tage-coping-joe-job/2

[VHG]

>There is not much you can do about it I'm afraid

We two things you CAN do are:

Not have obvious email address (fredsmith at xxxxx). If you are fred smith then have an email address that is not likely to be guessed (fsmithjnr or mefredsmith or whatever).

Have numerous email addresses, and keep some of them private (for friends / family) and NEVER post them anywhere on the interent.

Set up hotmail or googlemail addresses for using on the internet. Then if you get these sort of problems just drop them and move on to a new one.

[shivvy]

Thanks everyone.
I like the email address that I have (and have had it for years) so I don't really want to change it. So I think I will put up with it til they move on to someone else. How long could that take roughly?

Also, I have 2 more questions . . .

Firstly, can someone clarify just how they are able to send it from my account without being logged into my account? I can't send an email until I am logged into my own account so does that mean that they have my password?

Secondly, is it dangerous?