getting blasted with E-mails.....

A spammer can 'spoof' your e-mail address (change the sender to anyone they want) when they send out bulk e-mail. If they spoof the sender's IP address, it's even harder to track. Preventing what your experiencing is next to impossible, given the current system, without changing your e-mail address to something else. Be sure to double-check your system to make sure the problem isn't on your end; which I doubt. Also, you might try adding a really good spam filter to remove most of the spam your getting 'back' from your e-mail address - that you didn't send.

Mike.

thanks for the reply.  I was hoping you weren't going to say what you did though.  :(   

My e-mail address is a vital part of my business identity, so changing it would be a real bear to say the least.  Is there such a thing as getting my IP address changed?  Would that even help?   Or did I just happen to get hit by some computer program scanning websites and finding my address on my site?          This really makes me angry.   People that do this stuff need to go get a real job!

Unfortunately, your computer's IP address isn't the same as your e-mail address. If it was, you wouldn't be able to get your e-mail from anywhere but your one computer. However, with a spam filter, you should be able to 'filter' all e-mails coming from a specific ip address or ip address range; but if these are spoofed too, that might be difficult. If there are very common 'keywords' used in the e-mail's subject line, an e-mail filter could 'learn' to 'weed' these out. It, realistically, can't catch everything, but it might make the deludge more managible.

I'm not sure about the nature of your business, so this might not work. One thing you might be able to try - reverse 'weeding'. If your providing a link to your e-mail address for your customers, make a common word or phrase for the title and exclude all else as spam. That way, all e-mails containing this will be placed in the in-box and not placed in a spam folder.

For example, the subject could start as "{MyBusinessName}: {the sender's subject}". Where "{MyBusinessName}" is the identifier used by the spam filter to determine good e-mail from potentially bad.

Mike.

Hey flysnart,

I think most of us have had similar experiences.  I can remember one time when I was getting 30-50 spams a day for a period of two or three weeks.  What a nightmare!

At any rate, I solved my problem with the purchase of Mailwasher Pro, a very easy to use and configure anti-spam program that includes several types of spam filters plus the ability to set your own filter rules.  For me, anyway, a definite "worth-the-price" addition to my existing arsenal of "nasties" fighters.  Check it out at http://www.firetrust.com.

Hope this helps.

George

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Glad to hear it!

Maybe a 'relay' virus/trojan on a victims machine has been discovered and removed, or they're 'spoofing' someone else's e-mail address, sending them all the 'bounce-back' (returned) e-mail.

Mike.

thanks for everyone's help with this.   I set up some incoming mail filters that started to work earlier today, so that was a relief.  Mail was still pouring in, but at least most of the junk was moved right out of the inbox.      Then I started doing some spam software shopping.    But about an hour or two ago, the strangest thing happened..... As suddenly as this junk started appearing...it's now stopped altogether.   Nothing.   I was getting several a minute for the last day and a half and now nothing.

I'm not complaining of course, but VERY weird