[Hidden-tech] my mail's been hijacked! - asked and answered

[Rich]

The following people have answered with basically the same information I 
proved:

"Susanna Opper", Daniel Fried,
Mary Malmros, Joe Brandt, Chris Duncan, B. Kimo Lee
and others - we are getting so many responses, I am sending this before
adding all names.

Thank you all and let's close this topic unless someone has a solution.

For reference, This can be called Spoofing

and Kimo added:
> In your case, since you're using a first name for your username, it's  
> the first type of address a spammer will test. Better to pick a  
> username that is unique, i.e. first initial and last name -- perhaps  
> including numbers in it -- or anything else unusual. And then protect  
> it by googling your email address occasionally and contacting those  
> who've published it and asking them to remove it from their page, as  
> well as making sure any of your personal web site contact forms are  
> adequately protected.

The only additional comments explained, for those with their own domains:

1) Many spam attacks are called dictionary attacks and so show up as random
names or ever scrambled letters, all to the same domain.

2) You can have a 'catchall' mailing box, we strongly recommend you 
either have a 'catch all' mailbox -
which you dump fairly often or you set your domain to DELETE emails to 
unknown addresses.
What ever you do, do NOT set it to bounce since ISPs like comcast 
consider a lot of bounces coming
from a server as the server is sending spam and block all email from 
that server.

Likewise, we do not recommend, verification software to a domain 
catchall account , it sends one
or more 'are you a person' email on each spam, with the effect of 
getting you listed as a spammer
and clogging your server.

Rich the Webmaster

Juliet Jacobson wrote:
>   ** Be a Good Dobee and help the group, you must be counted to post .
>   ** Fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
>
>
> Has anyone out there ever had their mail client taken over? I woke up 
> this morning to over 300 "mail undelivered" messages for email that I 
> never sent. It seems my email address has been taken over by spammers? 
> or maybe some virus or spyware has installed itself on my computer and 
> is busily sending mail as if it's me? I use a mac G4 (not an intel 
> mac) running system 10.3.9. Any useful info for me? Thanks!
>
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-- 
Rich Roth
CEO On-the-net

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