Mail help needed - Delivery Failure messages

[oggbashan]

During the early hours (GMT) of this morning I received 750 delivery failure messages for messages I hadn't sent to people I don't know.

I suspect that they may have come from spam to one or more Yahoo Groups.

Any suggestions on how to stop them flooding my mailbox, please?

Og

 

[Ferawyn]

It sounds like someone used your address as a From address in a spam mailing. The only way to stop these incoming system messages (which are essentially legitimate error messages being sent to the originator of the message which failed delivery) without disabling all incoming mail is to insert a rule in your mail server's filters to drop any incoming error messages.

If you don't have configuration access to your mail server, you could try creating a rule in your mail client, that identifies error messages and redirects them straight to the trash. But that won't stop your mailbox from filling up. In this case I would suggest contacting your isp to see if they can help you.


Another reason to hate spam. I hope it doesn't last too long.

 

[Guest]

During the early hours (GMT) of this morning I received 750 delivery failure messages for messages I hadn't sent to people I don't know.

I suspect that they may have come from spam to one or more Yahoo Groups.

Any suggestions on how to stop them flooding my mailbox, please?

Og

Og, i dont know what mail program you are using. some programs you can tell to create a macro to put these emails directly into bulk mail or the trash.
This happened to me too. I contacted my ISP and they helped me try to take care of it. I also opened the email and followed the line of email addresses all the way down to the beginning and contacted that ISP. they eventually stopped.
crossing fingers for you.

 

[oggbashan]

Thank you.

I have had another 450 in the last three hours. Almost all have been directed to the spam folder but a couple of my friends also get their mail sent there.

I personally haven't sent an e-mail for days. All these error messages have happened during the last 22 hours.

If it continues tomorrow I will contact Yahoo.

Og

 

[cantdog]

I'm glad someone answered you, Og. I am so useless with stuff like this. Good fortune.

 

[oggbashan]

I put 'Instant Delete' on my spam folder.

12 hours later only 12 inappropriate messages got through to my Inbox. I contacted Yahoo by email. No response after 12 hours but I suppose it could have been directed to the spam folder.

Looking at the intended recipients of the returned mail it appears that I have been emailling the Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and most other former Communist states.

Last night I was receiving 10 'message failure' emails each second.

I have turned off 'Instant Delete' and will check again in 10 minutes to see if the flood has stopped. If still at last night's rate then 10 per second x 10 minutes = 6,000.

Og

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I've gotten these error messages for email I never sent too, but never in that amount.

I'm not expert, but it sounds like someone's turned your computer into a slave bot, what's known in the computer scam business as a zombie.

They sneak some software into your computer that forces it to send e-mail to the target of their choice at their command. The object is extortion. They contact the site and threaten to shut it down unless they're paid money, and if the target doesn't pay, they unleash an army of zombies on them, flooding the site with email and shutting the site down by clogging the servers. I believe it's called a Distributed Denial of Services shutdown, or something like that.

There's an article about this in the current New Yorker. Apparently, organized crime--especially the Russian mafia--is getting into this now and hitting some pretty high-end targets. Protection against this kind of thing is very expensive, but anti-virus and spyware is the first line of defense.

A company specializing in anti-zombie protection (Prolexic) estimates that a brand new PC running without virus or spyware protection will be infected with zombie software within 20 minutes of going online these days.

 

[Ferawyn]

I've gotten these error messages for email I never sent too, but never in that amount.

I'm not expert, but it sounds like someone's turned your computer into a slave bot, what's known in the computer scam business as a zombie.

They sneak some software into your computer that forces it to send e-mail to the target of their choice at their command. The object is extortion. They contact the site and threaten to shut it down unless they're paid money, and if the target doesn't pay, they unleash an army of zombies on them, flooding the site with email and shutting the site down by clogging the servers. I believe it's called a Distributed Denial of Services shutdown, or something like that.

There's an article about this in the current New Yorker. Apparently, organized crime--especially the Russian mafia--is getting into this now and hitting some pretty high-end targets. Protection against this kind of thing is very expensive, but anti-virus and spyware is the first line of defense.

A company specializing in anti-zombie protection (Prolexic) estimates that a brand new PC running without virus or spyware protection will be infected with zombie software within 20 minutes of going online these days.

<speculation mode>
Yahoo mail is a webmail service, isn't it? In that case, I doubt ogg's computer is infected (or at least, that that is the cause of this particular problem). While zombie computers were probably used to send the spam that is generating these error messages, the fact that ogg is receiving the error messages only signifies the recipient mail servers see his address as the sender. Not that he, his computer or his email service had anything to do with sending the spam in the first place.
</speculation mode>

It is true that zombie computers are turning into big business and that a number of recent virusses have been written specifically to find, exploit and zombify unprotected machines for use in spam and DDOS networks.

The best defense is a good firewall on your internet access, backed up by anti-virus software to screen incoming email and downloads, and simply patching your machine. (Something far to few computer users are aware of.)

 

[TxRad]

since you are getting all the failure to deliver messages... it sounds like your computer is being used to send spam which means you have a trojan or bot on your system giving acces to it to others....

Free programs ... Spybot search and Destroy.... Adware malware bots
Adaware.....Adware malware Bots
Zonealarm... Firewall
Microsoft Antispyware.... Microsoft download.com

You can also do scans from Symantic (Norton) and Pandascan.....

First you have to get the system clean.... if you're still recieving the returns then you're still sending out spam.....

 

[oggbashan]

My computer is on a dial-up modem and is only switched on when I'm using it.

My ISP is AOL and that checks for spyware etc everytime I log in.

I have Norton AV and run a scan everytime I start up.

I think the messages started with a Yahoo Group and took the group members list as source for sending the messages.

The problem seems to be diminishing and is now down to 20 or so an hour.

Thanks to all for their help.

Og