I'm being reverse spammed (Read 2265 times)

Spams.  We all get them.  Studies (I'm being vague so don't ask me to provide references) indicate that 60-97% of all email traffic is spam.  With filtering software, the actual number of spams that get through is relatively small.  For example, I get about one or two spams a day in my Gmail account.  Not too shabby.

As the spam filtering software improves, spammers are finding more novel ways of getting their message out.  How lucrative is their operation?  That's another topic for another time.  With botnets (a network of compromised computers over the internet that are controlled by the hackers), spammers send out tens of thousands of emais from these computers without their owners' knowledge, and without the worry of being tracked down.

To further cover their tracks, they will fill in the sender field with a random name from a legitimate domain.  If you look at the sender field in the email, it has nothing to do with the true sender.

In the last three days, my inbox is flooded with bounced spam.  A spammer is using runningahead.com as the origin of these emails.  A small percentage of email addresses are invalid and are bounced back to the sender.  I have a catch all account set up.  Any emails that are sent to RunningAHEAD but with an invalid recipient will reach this account.  At the peak, I was getting about 50-100 of these bounced emails a minute.

With dozens of users here on RA, and with millions of spams sent out, I'm sure one of you has gotten one of these emails (something about watches as a large discount).  I just want you to know that I am just as much of a victim as you.

eric :-)

Thanks for letting us know eric!

On the topic of how lucrative they are - I used to think no one was stupid enough to even open them.  And then I met my friend's boyfriend (now husband dear god).  I clearly remember the day he came into the living room saying "sweetheart you'll never believe it - I'm the 1,000,000th visitor to this website".  A few weeks later she had to have a conversation with him about why their credit card was maxed out and he'd bought himself all these "boys toys" type things (Playstation etc).  Its ok he said - we're rich - I got an email from this guy in Nigeria....

Yes there are still people out there that are this dumb.  And they only need to find a few of them.

With dozens of users here on RA, and with millions of spams sent out, I'm sure one of you has gotten one of these emails (something about watches as a large discount).  

I appreciate the note.  I'm pretty sure we all know that isn't how you roll.  I have yet to receive a fake note and I always validate your digital signature:  eric :-)

In the earliest days of my wildly successfully dot-com ventures , I freaked out when I started getting "bounce spam."

 

I actually looked at some of them and noticed that they're not all even legitimate bounces, that some of them actually mimicked a bounce to get the e-mail to be looked at more closely than usual.

 

I've heard of a double bluff but never a bouncy bounce.

Only 50 to 100 bounced messages?

Nice!

With all my domains, that's a light day for me.  I have a filter set to automatically delete them now, which sucks when my messages *do* bounce, but oh well.

Thanks for the heads up, and keep up the good work.