Email help

[wesleysgirl]

I'm getting a lot of spam email from what seems to be the same company, despite the fact that the email address it's coming from is always different. The weird thing is that the email isn't actually addressed to me -- it's always addressed to some randomshmoe@my.isp. Why am I getting email that doesn't seem to be addressed to me, and is there some way to block it?

Comments

[tsavoritegarnet.livejournal.com]

Spouse gets some like that, although he thinks it's actually to a letit addy for him. I'd guess that you're seeing what's in the "to" field, and that your address is in the "bcc" field.

I'm trying Spamarrest on one of my accounts. It's not working perfectly yet, and I haven't decided if I'll keep it. I used Knowspam for quite a while, and liked it, but it recently shut down and directed customers to spamarrest. Those have seemed like the best options. And, with knowspam, and I hope with spamarrest, if you send through their server, they can automatically add people you send to to the approved list, so they don't have to jump through hoops to answer you. But I haven't fussed with spamarrest to see if I can make that work yet.

[mogigraphia.livejournal.com]

As you don't own the domain, I suspect randomshmoe is simply the first of a very long list of recipients at your ISP which includes you. This sounds like very normal spam to me and means that your ISP is failing to protect you from spam properly.

Complain, complain, complain

[yasminke.livejournal.com]

We have this happen at the uni all the time. There's apparently a way to send an email to everyone at a certain domain, and often it's done while pretending to be from the same domain. Check the raw source of the message if you can; that might help you pinpoint who sent it.

Then: 1) report it to your ISP and complain about the amount you have been forced to endure; 2) report it to the sender's ISP, if you can; 3) download a spam program (If you're on XP, there's a program called MailWasher that a friend of mine uses. He reckons it's a lifesaver.); and 4) complain again to your ISP.

[redwolfoz.livejournal.com]

It's the latest virus doing the rounds.

The ones I've been getting are from support / webmaster / administrator / anything else vaguely official sounding at my domain and have been sent to random names at my domain.

The messages are along the lines of your email account being suspended and asking you to open the virus-laden attachment for further instructions.

As I own the domain, this isn't going to work on me. But it will for the less web savvy users if this looks like it's coming from AOL and they only get a few e-mails.

My virus programme says it's a worm called Mytob.CD (http://secunia.com/virus_information/17344/mytob.cd/), but it goes by other names.

It appears to be more annoying than destructive and is just self-propaging.

The vast bulk of viruses coming out in recent years are more interested in grabbing your system as a zombie or feeding you spam, than in killing your system.