Can You Stop Spammers From Using Your Email Address?

You’ve heard in the news about hacked company and website databases. When this happens, you may get an email from a website or service that you’ve used, prompting you to change your password. Please do it.

Within these breaches are email addresses. Sometimes, they are used to email folks to try and sell them something. Other times, they are used to trying to get those on the receiving end to click through and either provide more information (phishing) or attempt to infect their computers.

Email addresses can also be “farmed” from contacts you’ve communicated with who’ve been infected. I’ve had this happen to me over the years. Here’s an example from a site visitor:

I am receiving “Returned emails” that I never sent to begin with, yet it has my email address on it. Some of it seems like it has references to porn junk on it. I have contacted my ISP, but no response yet from them. My worry is that it seems someone has hijacked my email address and is sending spurious porn emails out to people I have never heard of, and I will get the blame for it…! How do I track these thugs down or stop this process? My business runs on this email address, and I don’t want to have to change it; who is to say it can’t happen again?

Net M@nners Site Visitor

What could happen is that someone you have emailed in the past has a virus. That virus has farmed all the email addresses on their system. Their computer now sends emails with those addresses in the From: field. That computer is now a “zombie” for viruses or worms.

Pick Your Email Battles

There are 215,298,720 emails sent every day. No way to track down everyone. When it comes to spoofing, using others’ email addresses is usually done through multiple, many times untraceable servers.

So, you may not hear from your ISP when you email them, as there is not much they can do. Nor is there anything you can do. However, you want to make sure you are not the one who is infected with a virus and scan your computer immediately.

I’ve learned over the years to delete those returns. No way to track them down. Another example is when I find someone has stolen website content or photos off one of my websites, I have to pick my battles. If they are on a .ru or .cn, what are the chances I can get anything resolved?

Misplaced Blame

Don’t worry about being blamed. It is common knowledge that spammers and virus creators are the culprits when this kind of thing happens.

And the adult email is most likely a farce that the virus is generating to be a troublemaker to lure particular recipients in. Those who know how to read email headers can quickly determine that the email did not originate from your account or ISP.

Identify and Report

There are sites like SpamCop.net where you can input all the emails and headers, and they track down the responsible parties, if possible, and report them to their ISP. However, if it is virus-generated, there is no way to track those “thugs” down.

It probably will happen again and is part of the current online landscape. As long as knuckleheads are out there who do not protect themselves from viruses and hackers, there will be those waiting to exploit them.

I can understand your frustration. But I really wouldn’t worry about it. I am so exposed online that I see my email address on all kinds of things that didn’t come from me, and I’ve decided to choose my battles carefully. So should you.