cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

PN email address being used by spammers

paulh
Rising Star
Posts: 1,283
Thanks: 10
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

PN email address being used by spammers

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 Crazy2)

 

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)

7 REPLIES 7
Baldrick1
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 11,631
Thanks: 5,167
Fixes: 416
Registered: ‎30-06-2016

Re: PN email address being used by spammers

@paulh 

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..

Moderator and Customer
If this helped - select the Thumb
If it fixed it,  help others - select 'This Fixed My Problem'

Townman
Superuser
Superuser
Posts: 22,923
Thanks: 9,542
Fixes: 159
Registered: ‎22-08-2007

Re: PN email address being used by spammers

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.

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.

paulh
Rising Star
Posts: 1,283
Thanks: 10
Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: PN email address being used by spammers

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

 

Baldrick1
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 11,631
Thanks: 5,167
Fixes: 416
Registered: ‎30-06-2016

Re: PN email address being used by spammers

@Townman 

 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)

Moderator and Customer
If this helped - select the Thumb
If it fixed it,  help others - select 'This Fixed My Problem'

Townman
Superuser
Superuser
Posts: 22,923
Thanks: 9,542
Fixes: 159
Registered: ‎22-08-2007

Re: PN email address being used by spammers

@Baldrick1 

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.

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.

Baldrick1
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 11,631
Thanks: 5,167
Fixes: 416
Registered: ‎30-06-2016

Re: PN email address being used by spammers

@Townman 

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?

Moderator and Customer
If this helped - select the Thumb
If it fixed it,  help others - select 'This Fixed My Problem'

Townman
Superuser
Superuser
Posts: 22,923
Thanks: 9,542
Fixes: 159
Registered: ‎22-08-2007

Re: PN email address being used by spammers

I’m not aware of SUs having any difference in the forum of the sort you’ve noted. May be it has been added to the language filter since first use!

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.