An example is :
| Subject | failure notice |
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. vpopmail (#5.1.1)
So, have other people also been getting such emails too ?
And what could these signify ?
3 comments:
hey nishank, this is strange... you get invalid recipient responses for addresses not sent! I have not heard of this behavior earlier with anyone... does it still persist?
actually,
it's happened a couple of times after the post also
I'm guessing some kind of bot activity.
I've gotten a few emails like this.
I'm pretty sure this is what is happening:
* Some spammer you've never heard of is sending email to everyone in an address book.
* The spammer forges someone else's address on the mail he sends out -- in this case, your address. (I'm a little fuzzy on whether he uses the same forged return address on every email in a batch, like a Joe job, or whether each email has a different forged return address, "from" one of the addresses in the address book.)
* Much of them spam gets manually or automatically deleted. But some emails to invalid addresses get bounced to the return address of -- in this case, you.
What can we do about this kind of forgery?
I hear that hashcash helps a little -- it at least slows down spammers so they only send 1 spam in the time they otherwise would send out hundreds.
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