PN email address being used by spammers
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PN email address being used by spammers
11-09-2019 10:59 AM
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I'm getting endless "undeliverable" messages in my PN inbox.
This appears to be because a site I once registered on using a PN address has been compromised & had their membership files extracted and is using my email address for that site for spamming.
(the site owner however tells me it can't be his fault and someone must have been monitoring my broadband with a packet sniffer )
can anything be done? Is there some tweak I can make to my PN email config (similar to blackholing) for this particular address?
or is the best I can do just set up my clients to delete these messages as they appear?
(yes, I have changed my address and password on the site, btw)
Re: PN email address being used by spammers
11-09-2019 11:31 AM - edited 11-09-2019 11:33 AM
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You can’t stop spammers using your address but you can stop all the stuff coming back to you simply by going into your Plusnet account email settings and changing your email address. This is a pain if it’s registered with a lot of organisations but is the sensible thing to do if the bad guys are using it. It will be instructive if you put your email address in here, it might reveal the source of the leak https://haveibeenpwned.com/
The catch all option is turned off by default in your Plusnet email settings but it’s worth checking that this is still set to off..
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Re: PN email address being used by spammers
12-09-2019 11:33 PM
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There is good merit in turning on catchall - then make up a unique email address for each site you register with - for example bbc@youraccount.plus.com / you.gov@youraccount.plus.com … all will be received by the catchall account. If any single address gets abused, you'll know where the abuse was started and you can then blackhole that single address.
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Re: PN email address being used by spammers
13-09-2019 11:02 AM
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Yes, in case it wasn't clear, this exactly what I have been doing for a decade - I must have dozens of unique addresses that I have used to register on websites & it's just the one I'm having the problem with rn.
I'll blackhole it as soon as I get off here
Re: PN email address being used by spammers
13-09-2019 2:31 PM
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I don't use my Plusnet email address but my understanding is that all proxy addresses set up get through without catchall being enabled. Hence the need to turn it off to suppress emails from both unwanted proxy addresses and false addressees in the bit before the @ (what ever that's called)
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Re: PN email address being used by spammers
13-09-2019 3:06 PM
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Yes that is true, but it just depends how anal you want to be! By "proxy" I guess you mean "alias" - yes one can tighten things up by manually adding an alias to whichever mailbox with catchall turned off. However just using catchall on a "dumping ground" mailbox is equally effective and a lot less hassle.
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Re: PN email address being used by spammers
13-09-2019 3:36 PM - edited 13-09-2019 3:42 PM
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Yes I meant alias not proxy. Doesn't deleting an alias address and turning off catchall automatically reject emails back to the sender with an undeliverable message? This presumably also works for any spam addressed to non existent alias mailboxes?
Conversely, doesn't dumping emails in a black hole mean that the undeliverable email message is not being returned and hence showing that the email address is still live, even if the messages are never picked up? I can see risks with accepting emails from a legitimate supplier but dumping them without reading or advising the sender that they're not being read on the grounds that they could have come from a scammer. Or is the sender automatically advised that their communication has been dumped?
I'm not deliberately being [-Censored-], I'm genuinely interested in how these things work.
Edit.
P.S. I'm fascinated why you can use a word referring to the back passage but when I write the word it's censored. Is this a Superuser privilege?
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Re: PN email address being used by spammers
13-09-2019 5:59 PM
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In another browser tab, login into the Plusnet user portal BEFORE clicking the fault & ticket links
Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.
If this post helped, please click the Thumbs Up and if it fixed your issue, please click the This fixed my problem green button below.
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