topic Spam emails being sent/received in Email

Spam emails being sent/received

visionfields — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 10:11:25 GMT

I am receiving thousands of "mail delivery failed" messages in my inbox for emails I didn't send. I think someone is using my email address to send out spam.

There are no sent messages that suggests they have hacked my plusnet email account and sending the messages from there.

It seems they have some way of sending out spam emails and any failed deliveries or replies get sent back to my email address.

With the few that have responses, I can see the spammer uses random senders names (not mine) when they send the emails but they all have my email address as the sender.

HELP! Any ideas how to stop this or suggestions what to do would be very much appreciated please...

Re: Someones using my email address to send spam emails - how can I stop it?

MisterW — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 09:34:26 GMT

@visionfields the chances are that they haven't actually hacked your account but I'd change your email password just in case.

They have 'harvested' your email address from somewhere and are just sending emails with your address as the sender, its all too easy to do. Most of the sent email will get bounced but as you've discovered that means that you get the bounce messages.

There's little you can do I'm afraid, wheoever it is will probably get bored using your email address and move on to someone elses eventually

Re: Someones using my email address to send spam emails - how can I stop it?

Dan_the_Van — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 09:56:38 GMT

@visionfields

Depending on your email client it might be possible to create a rule so all the failed delivery messages are automatically moved to a folder of your choice.

Outlook is an example of an email client.

Re: Someones using my email address to send spam emails - how can I stop it?

visionfields — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 16:15:42 GMT

Thanks for the suggestions. I created a rule in Outlook on laptop which cleaned things up there, but hasn't synchronized with iphone so still have '000's in iphone inbox. Any ideas how to force outlook to update mail on iphone please?

I don't go onto to Plusnet Webmail, but I've just gone on to that and the last email in the webmail inbox is from July! How can this be possible?

Re: Someones using my email address to send spam emails - how can I stop it?

Dan_the_Van — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 17:00:21 GMT

Are you using POP or IMAP? For multiple clients I would to use IMAP

IMAP leaves the emails on the server whereas POP depending on the setting will leave them on the server for a set time period before they are deleted. or they are deleted immediately.

It is not advised to mix POP and IMAP across clients

Regarding the rule it is local to the client being used, how ever on synchronising I would expect the emails to have been moved. Does the folder created appear on the iPhone?

Re: Someones using my email address to send spam emails - how can I stop it?

visionfields — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 08:22:43 GMT

Thanks, I'll check the settings between POP and IMAP.

The rule in Outlook is just sending them to the Junk folder. Maybe if I create a new folder to send them in it will replicate on iphone and may work?

Re: Someones using my email address to send spam emails - how can I stop it?

visionfields — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 15:41:58 GMT

hi @Dan_the_Van thanks for suggestions,

I went to change my Outlook connection to IMAP but now can't connect to plusnet email server as it seems they've blacklisted my email address (probably because of all the undeliverable emails received due to the spoofing problem)!

Doesn't seem to be anyway with iphone Mail to set email rules and now I can't connect via Oulook to set them either...

Plus, can't seem to raise email issues on the Plusnet portal..... Any suggestions please?

@plusnet can you help?

Re: Someones using my email address to send spam emails - how can I stop it?

keeka — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 08:33:22 GMT

I believe most mailservers won't bounce mail back to the sender if they think it's spam and/or has a forged sender address. If they did, we'd be receiving hundreds of bounces per day.

The server bouncing them either thinks the mail is legitimate (passes SPF etc), so does it's best to inform the sender

or is itself misconfigured and bouces spam.

If the former, I'd look closely at where the bounced messages originated (you should be able to glean that from headers of the original msg if attached).

If the latter, I think you may find all these bounces are coming from the same server(s) in which case configure your mail client to move/mark read.

If the mail does originated from an allowed source, then something is up.

Re: Someones using my email address to send spam emails - how can I stop it?

Townman — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 17:46:22 GMT

@visionfields wrote:

I think someone is using my email address to send out spam.

You have not indicated the nature of YOUR ADDRESS - is it a hosted domain name email address or you@youraccount.plus.com?

If the latter then one would hope that the remote services are at worst returning SPF / DKIM reports. If not then there is the risk that these emails are originating on Plusnet's network / through their SMTP service. There is even the possibility that rouge software on your device is sending the email. What anti-virus software do you use?

If a hosted domain name, where is the name server for the domain - elsewhere or on Plusnet? Does the domain have SPF configured?

Re: Someones using my email address to send spam emails - how can I stop it?

visionfields — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 19:42:27 GMT

Thank you @Townman for your response to my issue. Unfortunately I'm getting a bit out of my depth technically to try some of the things being suggested, but I can confirm my email address that has been compromised is my plusnet one - name@username.plus.com.

I only really use an iphone and I don't think it has any anti-virus software running. My partner used an old laptop which has Outlook on the create a rule to push all the delivery failure messages into the Junk folder, but this din't replicate on my iphone.

Since calling Plusnet yesterday the '000's of delivery failure emails has stopped but now although I am still receiving normal emails, I can no longer send any. They remain in my outbox on iphone. On plusnet webmail is shows as sent but they are not being received. On the old laptop my partner tried switching the connection in Outlook from POP to IMAP, and now we can no longer connect to the mail servers. The test email comes back with:

which looks like whatever Plusnet may have done to stop me being bombarded with the bogus delivery failure emails has also potential created a problem in me sending any emails from my Plusnet account.

From searching on-line I believe may be victim of a Spoof attack where someone creates spam/malicious emails that look as though they have come from a ligitimate source (in this case my email address). I have no idea how this is done, but the undelivered emails I get look like the one below:

The email the "spoofer" sent out is shown below (which are attached to the delivery failure emails). Out of the '00's failed delivery emails I've received 2-3 are actual replies from people the "spoofer" has targetted and based on their rude comments I suspect they had potentially clicked on the links sent in the email:

I'll try calling Plusnet tomorrow to see if they can tell me what they have done to stop the message failure emails all coming through and why I can no longer send any emails.

I'd be interested in any further insights you may be able to share too!

Thanks,

Re: Someones using my email address to send spam emails - how can I stop it?

Townman — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 17:05:30 GMT

I have now escalated this issue.

Spam emails from plus.com addresses

Mardler — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 12:18:00 GMT

I'm getting frequent spam emails purporting to be from Boots re a survey and giveaway.

All the sender addresses are from plus.com. None are known to me: I've blocked all, obviously.

Either PN webmail is being hacked in real time or it's been hacked and the entire list stolen.

Anyone else having the same problem?

Any thoughts, especially from PN?

Re: Spam emails from plus.com addresses

jab1 — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 12:22:17 GMT

Already under investigation.

Re: Spam emails from plus.com addresses

philipdp — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 13:26:34 GMT

Yep, same problem, I have just received my third one

Re: Spam emails from plus.com addresses

Batphone — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 13:44:43 GMT

Just started another thread because I didn't see this one, but have been getting the "Boots store survey" e-mails since yesterday evening. Can't say I have had "thousands", just a handful to both of my PlusNet addresses.

Re: Spam emails from plus.com addresses

Mardler — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 13:46:23 GMT

What is, John? My question or the OP above?

I have no idea why PN chose to put my new topic under this one, they're different issues! It also doesn't help but hinders the OP.

PN, please rectify.

Re: Spam emails from plus.com addresses

jab1 — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 13:45:42 GMT

@Mardler If your above post is in answer to my reply, the answer is : the issue you are experiencing.

Re: Spam emails from plus.com addresses

Mardler — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 13:50:52 GMT

It was, John.

I have had no response from PN nor did I see anything relevant before I posted a new topic. Are you talking about the referral mentioned above? If so, it's not necessarily the same issue.

The two topics should have been kept separate.

Re: Spam emails from plus.com addresses

jab1 — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 13:53:42 GMT

@Mardler I tend to agree that the issue you refer to is not related really to the topic it has been merged into, but that was not my decision.

Re: Spam emails from plus.com addresses

Batphone — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 13:58:46 GMT

The "Boots store survey" issue does appear to be different to the one reported by the OP, but might the be related in some way?