A Question About Email...

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Lately, I have been getting a lot of emails in my inbox that say "receiver unknown", which means that someone is using my email address to send spam without my knowledge. What should I do?

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Monday, 10 February 2003 16:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Think I've got the same thing. I'll ask an egghead.

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Monday, 10 February 2003 16:57 (twenty-two years ago)

ive had the same also aaron, only a couple of times but still worrying. ive received spam/virus from a number of people on ilx including myself, which is quite clearly not the people themselves

― gareth (gareth), Monday, 10 February 2003 16:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Nowt you can do.

― Graham (graham), Monday, 10 February 2003 16:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Can you not ask your email service providers to look into it for you ?

They would keep a log on the POP and SMTP servers, unless these people are really clever it would be able to show who they really are. Again, I maybe talking bollocks.

― Fuzzy (Fuzzy), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:01 (twenty-two years ago)

It might not necesarily be that someone's using yr email address to send spam.
If a spammer sends an email with headers like this:
To:
CC:
Bcc: youraddress@hotmail.com, otheraddresses@hotmail.com

Then it'll show up as "recipient uknown" --because the only recipients are Bcc's (blind carbon copy), which can't be shown. If you want to know more about what Bcc is, a google search should help you out.

Anyway, I'd put my money on that being what's going on. As for how to fix it- I'd switch hotmail for a yahoo email address. MUCH, MUCH nicer spam control. Also, the longer the part of your email address before the "@" the less "dictionary attack" spam you'll get- I'd say try to get at least 10 characters into the username part of email address.

― lyra (lyra), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Or- if you don't want to switch from hotmail- get Outlook (for PCs) or Entourage (for Macs) and buy some spam blocking software, then check your hotmail through that. Some filtering software is pretty good... but I don't think any of them will work if you're checking your email through the web interface.

― lyra (lyra), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:03 (twenty-two years ago)

</egghead> ;-)

― lyra (lyra), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:04 (twenty-two years ago)

thanks lyra... i am not sure whether i will switch email addresses just yet... if this stops within the next week or two... i have had this address forever...
what is worrying me is that this problem has been a constant for the last week or two.

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:08 (twenty-two years ago)

the problem is aaron, that even after you switch adddresses these things will continue to be sent with your name attached:(

― gareth (gareth), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh no- once it starts, it rarely stops; usually it's because you got onto some list of email addresses sold to spammers. My advice: cut your losses now, and set up another (or two) email addresses now.

You could try writing to the hotmail folks to complain, but I doubt that'd help. Speaking of which, I'll make a small plug for speakeasy- they're awesome about blocking spam, too, and really responsive when you report messages.

― lyra (lyra), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:14 (twenty-two years ago)

yeh it does suck, gareth. what bothers me the most is that someone is going to blame me for filling up their email box.

there was a good article in the nytimes magazine yesterday that talked about how spam was basically the achilles heel of the internet and all of its promise.

lyra i will look into it. thanks again.

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:16 (twenty-two years ago)

i agree completely. in fact i have slight paranoia that this is partially responsible for the breakdown of a close friendship. yes, it was in a very bad way anyway, but the possibility that she might have opened some kind of virus that purported to come from me, which she might have thought of as last straw is pretty sobering. in other situations the person would probably ask "was this you?", but if things are not good anyway...

― gareth (gareth), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:26 (twenty-two years ago)

gareth that stinks!
i wasn't even thinking of people i know... it was more like... when i open my email and check it and see all of the junk mail, i wonder "who are these fuckers" and it bothers me that I could be included in that ie it came out os someone elses mouth, no matter who it is...

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:30 (twenty-two years ago)

also are there any free webmail solutions besides yahoo and hotmail that are highly-regarded?

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Monday, 10 February 2003 17:32 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

This is fascinating

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/12/21/soldier.email.ap/index.html

basically:
"The family of a Marine killed in Iraq is pleading with Internet giant Yahoo! for access to his e-mail account, which the company says is off-limits under its privacy policy."

I don't know if I'd want mine released to my family.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 21 December 2004 20:59 (twenty years ago)

i don't understand why they want access to it. are they also planning to go through all of his other "confidential" type things-medical records, legal or psychiatric records, etc.? it seems a strange request.

― Emilymv (Emilymv), Tuesday, 21 December 2004 21:44 (twenty years ago)

I guess it's the sense that they will be deleted and never viewed by anyone ever again? A part of him will be irretrievably lost as an archive is not kept.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 21 December 2004 21:50 (twenty years ago)

two years pass...

REVIVE!

Why? Because I have a question, I do.

Who here has the oldest functioning email address? I've had my hotmail account since 1999, which is pretty lame since I know I had email at uni in 1996, but because I've had so many jobs I've never kept a work address for long.

So who's email goes back the furthest? Anyone still using a compuserve addy? Or one of those ones that was just numbers, before you could personalise?

Fess up, y'all!

― CharlieNo4, Thursday, 27 September 2007 12:41 (eighteen years ago)

My Yahoo account, which I use for ILX and registering with stuff on the internet, is from mid-1998?

I tried emailing it✧✧✧@c✧✧.warw✧✧✧.a✧.u✧ but it bounced back, so RIP my first email address.

― Mark C, Thursday, 27 September 2007 12:44 (eighteen years ago)

i've had the same hotmail address since 1996, which i still use pretty frequently.

― darraghmac, Thursday, 27 September 2007 13:49 (eighteen years ago)

i remember setting up my first yahoo account in spring 1998, after i'd finished school and no longer had that acct. i still use this yahoo email for certain things! but had to delete a lot of email over the years b/c of such limited storage restrictions :( oh the olden days

― rrrobyn, Thursday, 27 September 2007 14:35 (eighteen years ago)

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