SPAM in every e-mail account on your mac??

[Parker]

Another addition to my many posts...

I've been getting a lot of spam on my Mac lately, and it all seems to be related. I got 3 messages, all similar, in 3 different e-mail boxes just now.

It's been going on for a while now.
I shouldn't really be getting any spam because i use all private domain e-mail addresses (with the exception of .mac and gmail, and i've never gotten spam in the two before; nobody knows those addresses really.)

And when I bounce the messages in Mail, it says it could not be delivered.

Any help?

-Parker

[beacher]

Hey Parker, it may be that the spammers have gotten your address from one of the people that you've written to, who have you in their address book.  This has happened to me, and there's really not much you can do about it.  I have had something even weirder happen to me a couple of times, and that's that I've received an email from "mail deamon" (sp?) telling me that an email has not been delivered, to someone that I don't even know!  Gives me a bad feeling, 'cause I'm hoping that I don't have a lot of friends getting spam and thinking I sent it!

[Paddy]

Beacher, what you're seeing with the mailer-daemon thing is an email generated by someone infected with good ole' W32.Mydoom.AZ@mm.

No worries - just delete it.

Parker - once the spammers get hold of your email address, it tends to get added to lists that are sold and passed around. So, unfortunately, you may find your once pristine inbox cluttered. I'm extremely careful, and despite my extreme care, still get some spam now and again. It seems to come in waves - none for a while and then I start getting another bunch, and yes - usually the same sort repeatedly for a while. I have an extensive set of spam rules for Entourage - whenever I get really ticked off, I add to them. Anything with a .gif attachment for instance goes immediately to Jail, without passing Go! I have a folder called "spamcheck" which gobbles all the suspicious stuff automatically thanks to the rules. I check it every couple of days or so, extracting the odd real email (usually from a mail-list that I belong to) and toss the rest.

[Parker]

Hence the reason why i set up techsurvivors@parker.tc
not that i don't trust y'all, but it's an e-mail address that i don't really care about getting cluttered and stuff.

Half of the e-mails i've been getting are to addresses i haven't even given out to anyone, for say my gmail account; nobody has ever had it except my friend JJ, who also has a mac.

And the spam comes from one source and it's all related to each other and all looks the same (with different fake e-mail addresses because i try to bounce it back and it won't bounce)

Whatever, my Junk box on my Mac catches it, but Network Solutions doesn't.

[Xairbusdriver]

Bouncing emails is pretty much a waste of time and bandwidth; the "From:" addresses are hardly ever real, so all you are doing is creating more traffic on the net - one for the bounce and another when it returns undeliverable. However, many believe forwarding the SPAM to certain sites that collect them may help. Dno't expect much decrease, however...

Whether your address is 'private' or not is almost irrelevant. There are programs that 'create' domains and addresses from thin air ( well almost ). So your 'private' domain is only guaranteed to keep real people from reaching you with it. Of course, if you respond in any way to the message ( see below ), you can be logged as a 'good/live' address and your address becomes very desirable to other SPAMmers!

If you're using Mail ( and most other email clients ), I don't think there is a way to 'preview' a message in order to see what's inside it. In other words, viewing any Mail email will automatically send requests for all/any graphics in it, even the 1 x 1 pixel, invisible gif's that you'll never see. Of course, you can turn graphics OFF, but I still think it's better to use a program that can read the messages without being able to download the images. I use PopMonitor to 'preview anything that might be in my 6 mailboxes. It is capable of deleting messages or flagging suspected SPAM with it's own set of filters. I don't use that function anymore, preferring to let SPAMsieve learn from the bad stuff.