Firetrust Support Forums

A spammer is using MY email address to send ME spam. My ISP (onetel.net) keeps me occupied by giving me silly things to do. No explanation as to why their security allows it. Any ideas?

Anyone can use your e-mail address, it is simple to put anything in an e-mail as the sender's address, I used to send the kids e-mail from Santa. You should never trust the information in any e-mail beyond what your own mail server has placed there which is when it got the mail and the machine that gave it the message to deliver to you.

There is nothing you can do to stop the scammers from borrowing your address for messages to you or to your friends, yep they do that too so folks that use e-mail addresses as filters (like MW's friends list) don't see the messages as spam right away. Even worse is when they borrow it for a big run of thousands of spam messages and your inbox fills with bounces, complaints and challenge messages.

The only thing you can do is filter out the messages that have your address in them but that you didn't send. The wiki has more detailed info but the basics are simple remove your address from the friends list and create a filter that looks at the whole From: line in the message, check that it matches what your e-mail program actually sends and that spammers so far haven't bothered to duplicate.

Thank you. I am using MWP and can recognise and delete spam from me to me. What terrifies me is if the spammers can use my address at will, that one day it will be used to send spam en mass. I assume from your reply that there is nothing I can do about. Why can't the ISP?
Mike

You are confusing two basic things, forging your e-mail address onto a message and getting access to your e-mail account at your ISP.

Look it in a different way, a forger prints up a fake check on your bank account and forges your name to it then passes it to someone who doesn't make the effort to see that it is forged. That is much easier than coming into the bank and presenting forged identification to a teller to access your accounts.

The bank and the ISP are in the same position on the first situation, nothing the ISP can do to stop someone from typing your e-mail address into a computer somewhere in China and nothing your bank can do to keep someone from printing up a fake check and forging your name to it. The second situation is similar too in that if you don't present proper ID to the ISP or bank they won't give you access to your account. Your ISP is doing their job which is protecting your account.


There are things that can be done to protect your e-mail address but they would have to be done by every ISP and done the same way. So far every attempt at a single solution has been blocked by folks that make good money from sending or fighting spam leaving us the users stuck with all the hassle and grief.

Thanks for all the info. At least I know I'm never alone with a spam. After scratching the naughty bits for several hours, and following your instructions I now have a filter that alerts me and allows me to report to Spamcop. Whether that does any good or not I know not. You will probably disabuse me! It took so long because the filter would not work until a new message arrived.

My ISP has suggested changing my email address password. From what you say, I am guessing this would not help?
They also suggested changing my email address. The chaos and confusion this would cause me would be far worse than the situation as is. I have enough confusion with two address as it is. (One dial up from the old days, and a broadband).

Mike

Changing your password wouldn't do much good since they don't need it to borrow your address, the only time you need to change it is if you get infested with one of the Windows programs that steals it and passes it to spammers.

Changing your e-mail address is a true hassle, better to keep tweaking MW until the spam is sorted and your good messages protected and just live with the spam. If you did get a new address it is only good as long as you never use it, once you send someone a message and they get infested with one of the viruses your new address will be on the spammer's lists again and all of your effort is wasted. I have several dedicated addresses, one newly created address, that took a while to get everyone changed over to lasted less than 24 hours before it got its first spam. The first person I e-mailed was a Windows user and had a harvester virus that happily passed my address on to a spammer.

Reporting to spamcop will reduce your spam from some spammers, they take you off their lists so that they can send more spam before their servers get blacklisted. Sadly too many spammers are using bot nets or compromised machines and could care less about blacklisting, they keep sending spam to adresses that have been dead for years or that reports every spam.

I report a lot of stuff, especu=ially ones that have a gmail or other mail service contact address in the body, most of the mail services really appreciate that type of warning and close the accounts rather quickly cutting the spammer off from any profits. Sadly MSN and Hotmail aren't so responsive and you have to dig out a special reporting address rather than the Internet standard abuse@ address that less spammer friendly support.

Thanks for all your info. I will apply your advice.
Delay in replying due to a week's holiday.
Mike