My email is being used for spam

[thebeard]

Has anybody else seen their own email account being used as spam? For the past two weeks I keep getting spam sent to one of my accounts: "inbox@mydomain.net" from "inbox@mydomain.net" and I didn't send them!

I think I can grab the IP address from where it came and ping it to death. But is there anything else that can be done?

[areidmtm]

in short, no. You cannot stop this from happening. There was a thread somewhere here that talked about it, but I don't remember where.

[charlesgan]

Has anybody else seen their own email account being used as spam? For the past two weeks I keep getting spam sent to one of my accounts: "inbox@mydomain.net" from "inbox@mydomain.net" and I didn't send them!

I think I can grab the IP address from where it came and ping it to death. But is there anything else that can be done?

as long the email spam is not originating from your server IP, then its ok.
probably someone hate you and use your domain name for spamming for nothing, and route the bounce back to your mailbox...

put in spam filter.

(not recommended) or temporary disable the account. this method works for me before.

[felgall]

The spammers always put some other email address in as the FROM field so that if the destination server stupidly bounces the email that it will then be forwarded to a second address in the hope that it will get delivered there instead.

[thebeard]

The spammers always put some other email address in as the FROM field so that if the destination server stupidly bounces the email that it will then be forwarded to a second address in the hope that it will get delivered there instead.

Just out of curiosity, how are they using my email address to send an email to the same address? Can they do this using webmail? It seems dumb to me to send spam to the scape goat your abusing.

[felgall]

The from field in the email itself can be set to anything you like. It just needs to be sent via a mail server that doesn't check that the from mailbox exists on the server. Most mail servers I have seen don't perform that check - Bluehost are the only place I have seen that does block sending from non existant email accounts although I expect there are probably lots of others that do as well..

[charlesgan]

Just out of curiosity, how are they using my email address to send an email to the same address? Can they do this using webmail? It seems dumb to me to send spam to the scape goat your abusing.

the email header can be constructed...
by this they can place any name/emails to the FROM...

even from bill_gate@m.....com

for your case, it will be youremail@yourdomain.com ..