Domain name used to send emails without permission

[drivetowin]

Hi

I'm looking for some advice on a problem - I bought a domain name in August last year - but am yet to do anything with it.

I have now discovered that a company in India is sending out emails using my domain name - i.e. fred@widgets.com

This means that

a) I'm getting loads of emails written in Hindu which are people responding to these emails

b) They are now sending out emails infected with the latest virus worm (I assume unknowingly) which is triggering loads of virus trap emails back to my server.

It's a good domain name so I don't want to ditch it but equally don't want to be blacklisted by my ISP and/or hosting company for sending spam / virus infected emails - so what can / do I do?

[matbennett]

I have had this quite a few times in the past. The first few times I got really hacked off with it and tried various things from reporting to ISPs to forwarding all mail to an admin address.

To be honest, it generally only lasts a few weeks, after which time the addresses become less useful to them. Not what you want to hear I am sure, but there really does not seem to be an effective way to combat it.

I wouldn't dump the domain though. In my experience they are just as likely to use a new domain as a pre-owned one.

[ianm]

Originally posted by kbudden
It's a good domain name so I don't want to ditch it but equally don't want to be blacklisted by my ISP and/or hosting company for sending spam / virus infected emails - so what can / do I do?

I've had this as well on a couple of domains.

You'll normally get a few bounce backs where they've spammed closed addresses. Keep a couple of those so that if your ISP/host starts causing problems you can use the headers to prove that you didn't send the emails.

[jamcamuk]

Hi,

contact you host. let them know whats going on as you have here in the same words.

paste some of the headers from the emails so they no it is not you!

do you know the company that is sending them? if yes give that info to your host and they will do or should do there best to try and stop it.

If not move to us and we will do our best to contact them and see what is up. Also do you have any spam software on your server or hosting account you can have on to stop this ?

James

[Dynamoo]

If you're only on the "From:" address then it's just an irritation that will pass if you stop scratching at it.

Anybody who deals with spam routinely ignores the From: address and instead concentrates of the originating IP address and any spamvertised web site.

It'll do no harm to give your host the heads up though.

I had a spate of this a couple of weeks ago. It went away though with no problems.