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 — but verify the source first.

Within these breaches are email addresses. Sometimes, these stolen addresses are used to email folks to try to sell them something. Other times, they are used to try 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 generally happens is that someone you have emailed in the past gets a virus. That virus then harvests all the email addresses on their system. Their computer now sends emails with those addresses in the From: field. That computer is now what is called a “zombie” for viruses or worms.

Pick Your Email Battles

There are 376.5 billion emails sent and received per day, and there is no way to track down everyone. Regarding spoofing, using others’ email addresses is usually done through multiple, often untraceable servers.

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 infected with a virus, so scan your computer immediately.

You may receive returned or bounced emails from someone using these emails, or sometimes even your own. Over the years, I’ve learned to delete those returns. Again, there is no way to track them down.

One example of picking your battles is when someone has stolen website content or photos from one of my websites. If they are on a .ru or .cn domain name, what are the chances I can get anything resolved? Zilcho.

Misplaced Blame

Don’t worry about being blamed. Spammers and virus creators are the culprits who use other people’s email addresses to propagate viruses.

Viruses are created to be troublemakers and lure particular recipients in. However, 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. They track down the responsible parties and report them to their ISP if possible. However, if the email 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 again, I choose my battles carefully. So should you.