Re: OT request for arcane tech help

Keith,

There are sights that are set up to catch misspelled searches. Think of a
way to misspell Google and a site will come up. If someone meant to type a C
where you have a G they might have been after something other than gum
prints. It could be there is someone who wants your address to catch that
misspelling.

Jack

> From: Keith Gerling <Keith@GumPhoto.com>
> Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
> Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2006 11:29:15 -0700
> To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
> Subject: RE: OT request for arcane tech help
>
> Hi Liam,
>
> My concern is that my domain name finds itself added to spam filters thus
> rendering my email address useless for communication. My mailbox has been
> filled up with bounced messages, and I cringe at the thought of the number
> of messages that WERE successfully delivered with "from gumphoto.com". My
> hosting service, who has treated this issue in a somewhat cavalier fashion,
> insists that the "from" field has, indeed, been used, and that spam
> filtering services are aware of this tactic and that there is no true risk
> of "permanent damage". Looking at the headers of the bounced messages, I
> see a confusing mess of different ip addresses, so I suppose they may be
> correct and that the SMTP service at the webhost is NOT being used for spam
> relay. But a security scan that Gordon was kind enough to run for me does
> indicate that there may be some lax security at my webhost. The whole issue
> has been a big pain and I have to wonder that if the "from" field can indeed
> be anything, why pick an actual domain? Why even bother with harvesting,
> which I thought was more appropriate to finding recipients for spam, not
> fake senders?
>
> Thanks for the info.
>
> Keith
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Liam Lawless [mailto:lawless@bulldoghome.com]
> Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 8:07 PM
> To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
> Subject: RE: OT request for arcane tech help
>
>
> Keith,
>
> My wife's e-mail has recently been subject to a similar attack. I'm no
> expert on these things and her domain host wasn't interested, but I've been
> doing a bit of reading on the web and it seems likely that the e-mail
> attached to her domain has been "harvested" from the internet, a discussion
> forum or somesuch. It seems that anyone sending an e-mail can put anything
> they like in the "From" field, and the reason that spammers use fake
> addresses is that large volumes of mail will be flagged by their ISPs.
>
> It is said that spammers usually move on to a different address after a week
> or two, but it may be possible to deflect the bounce messages by disabling
> the catchall feature of your e-mail account. To do this for my wife's
> account, I had to go to her domain's control panel, click on "Default Mail
> Account", then "Set Default Address (Catch All)", and type ":fail:" in the
> box which asks where unrouted mail to the account should be sent. Any
> bounce messages addressed to qytwehx@herdomain.com (or other name made from
> random characters) should then go back to the original sender who,
> hopefully, will then move on to someone else's e-mail address.
>
> I've only done this tonight, so can't say if it's worked yet, and of course
> your control panel will probably be different.
>
> And a disadvantage, I suppose, is that you cannot use the catchall feature,
> but hope this is some help.
>
>
>
> Liam
>
> ---
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>
>
>
Received on Sat Apr 29 20:12:21 2006