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Sudden Spam Increase

Hawks
Grafter
Posts: 31
Registered: ‎02-08-2007

Sudden Spam Increase

Normally, I have no problems with spam but yesterday morning I received around 200 'delayed delivery messages' in the space of about 2 hours.  All had unrecognised addresses on them.  I have received a further dozen or so today.  The only coincidence is that I was running anti-virus scans both times when all these rogue messages arrived in my mail box.  Surely that was no more than a coincidence?  I have run those scans many times before without this happening.  Has anybody experienced anything similar this weekend?
8 REPLIES 8
Kwak
Rising Star
Posts: 137
Thanks: 11
Registered: ‎05-11-2007

Re: Sudden Spam Increase

Oddly enough I considered posting here on this subject a while ago:
I don't use my name.plusnet.com address for anything, I have a domain that forwards to it, so not
many people 'out there' should really have it.
About a month or two ago, I was surfing away and suddenly started getting emails as you describe,
failure notices, and I got a more than 200 hundred of them, more like .5-600 of them over
the course of a day, then it stopped, then I got another couple hundred a few days later,
then it stopped again, thank god. They were all spoofing my plusnet address/domain e.g.
madeup@myname.plus.com, which was VERY strange.
I wondered if anyone else had seen anything like this?
I wondered at the time if some website had sneakily reverse dnsed me in some way and
started spoofing it (even though I have it set to ip.plus.com, I believe it's possible) or they
were somehow going through plusnet domain names? It wasn't like I was on
wierd sites but a couple were those annoying pages that come high in google listings
but whose entire content is 'other links and nothing useful', so are probably more than
a bit 'spam friendly' .. got me wondering..
Hawks
Grafter
Posts: 31
Registered: ‎02-08-2007

Re: Sudden Spam Increase

Yes, Kwak.  Sounds very similar.  All the spam emails (and I'm still receiving them - but not at the same rate) have different 'madeup@myname.plus.com' style addresses in them and the subjects shown are also different each time (but all the usual wacky stuff).
Mav
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 22,371
Thanks: 4,725
Fixes: 514
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Sudden Spam Increase

It was covered in this thread.
For me it stopped as suddenly as it started  - HTH Smiley

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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear - Mark Twain
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Kwak
Rising Star
Posts: 137
Thanks: 11
Registered: ‎05-11-2007

Re: Sudden Spam Increase

Hawks, an interesting thing I noticed was all of the made up (or harvested) names started with same letter.
Same with you?
ChrisL
Rising Star
Posts: 760
Thanks: 4
Fixes: 1
Registered: ‎13-12-2007

Re: Sudden Spam Increase

As well as the thread linked by Mav, you might like to have a look at this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outscatter .....  Your problem is a common one, and should sort itself out over a few days.
Hope this helps
Chris
jazz
Grafter
Posts: 240
Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: Sudden Spam Increase

Yep - this is a temporary problem.  I got 2,500 on my first day of "backscatter" last month but by day 4 it had stopped and I just got the odd one or two more a couple of weeks later (must have been some very slow thinking servers rejecting the spoofed emails!).  All were said to emanate from my username but all had "madeup@username.plus.com.  They were all variations on the same "madeup" element.  I started using Webmail for a couple of days to go and delete rubbish there rather than wasting time downloading it to my own computer.  I'm sure your problem will go away soon.  Smiley
Hawks
Grafter
Posts: 31
Registered: ‎02-08-2007

Re: Sudden Spam Increase

Thank you everyone.  I'm still getting them (16 more so far today) but at least it's not the huge numbers that some of you guys received - touch wood!  Yes, Kwak - all the addresses start with the same letter - it's "n" this time. 
Anotherone
Champion
Posts: 19,107
Thanks: 457
Fixes: 21
Registered: ‎31-08-2007

Re: Sudden Spam Increase

Hey guys, can you be absolutely sure that your 'username' hasn't been mentioned in a public domain anywhere at all, not on your websites etc. or given your e-mail address to any organisations, or worse had your website hacked?