Nov 21 2008
How can I resolve a situation where someone is using my email to spam folks?
This is most likely a spammer who has randomly selected your email address as the return path and/or from for outbound spam.
In this case you will likely be receiving non delivery reports (NDRs) generated by the outbound spam traffic.
Unfortunately since the spammer is almost certainly using network resources not under your email provider’s control (like Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, etc.), short of analyzing traffic and attempting to track it down to the source networks which will most likely lead back to a group of diverse, compromised computers, (not a recommended good use of your time), the best option is probably to define a message rule. Locate something common but unique about the NDRs so that they are automatically moved into a separate folder or simply deleted.
These NDRs are not themselves spam and thus they are unlikely to get blocked by existing spam blocking measures.
Eventually the spammer will select some other address to use.
Note: you would have more options to block this sort of thing if you had domain based email, particularly your own domain under your control, then you could contact your hosting company for assistance blocking the traffic, or use any number of domain-based antispam services such as Total Mail Defense.
Additionally, domain based email accounts are generally less likely to be subject to this sort of abuse, although it can happen to any email address.
Answer written by Founder, Chairman and CTO, Ron Edison
