I am receiving mail addressed to someone else. My mail address is r.godzilla@comcast.net. I have received mail addressed to: r.godzilla@calamitygrowing.com and from: joe-blow@comcast.net. These are not forwarded mails. How is this possible? I use fetchmail to receive my mail. Is there anyway to stop this? These are just two examples. I have received similar miss addressed mail from other names also. Can a procmail rule be used to stop this? If so what would that rule be?
On Wed, 3 Nov 2004 14:07:51 -0800, Richard E Miles r.godzilla@comcast.net wrote:
I am receiving mail addressed to someone else. My mail address is r.godzilla@comcast.net. I have received mail addressed to: r.godzilla@calamitygrowing.com and from: joe-blow@comcast.net. These are not forwarded mails. How is this possible? I use fetchmail to receive my mail. Is there anyway to stop this? These are just two examples. I have received similar miss addressed mail from other names also. Can a procmail rule be used to stop this? If so what would that rule be?
-- Richard E Miles Federal Way WA. registered linux user 46097
Read the message header and you will see why, I don't know what you are using as mail client, but most of them allows you to read the actual header.
Yang
I've heard of people being able to spoof these fields and put information in there and have it show up as something different. I can't really say for sure since I am not too familiar with it all myself. However, have you tried sending an email to those accounts and seeing if they come to you? If they don't then maybe those received emails are some of those spoof ones that I have heard of.
On Wed, 2004-11-03 at 14:07 -0800, Richard E Miles wrote:
I am receiving mail addressed to someone else. My mail address is r.godzilla@comcast.net. I have received mail addressed to: r.godzilla@calamitygrowing.com and from: joe-blow@comcast.net. These are not forwarded mails. How is this possible? I use fetchmail to receive my mail. Is there anyway to stop this? These are just two examples. I have received similar miss addressed mail from other names also. Can a procmail rule be used to stop this? If so what would that rule be?
-- Richard E Miles Federal Way WA. registered linux user 46097
However, have you tried sending an email to those accounts
and seeing if they come to you? If they don't then maybe those received emails are some of those spoof ones that I have heard of.
NO you won't get the email and NO don't do it!!! You will just verify to the spammer that your email address is valid and you will get more spams! What happens is there are two headers. envelope and message header and they don't need to match What you are seeing is a message come in with the envelope header RCPT TO: your real email address and the Message header contains a To: header with joeblow@comcast.com Read the headers and see for yourself.
Yang
On Wed, 2004-11-03 at 16:17, Patrick Ryan Vinson wrote:
I've heard of people being able to spoof these fields and put information in there and have it show up as something different. I can't really say for sure since I am not too familiar with it all myself. However, have you tried sending an email to those accounts and seeing if they come to you? If they don't then maybe those received emails are some of those spoof ones that I have heard of.
That is a very insecure recommendation to just blatently suggest.
1. If it is spam and the user replies, it confirms a valid address. 2. If it comes from a virus/spam engine it is just extra garbage in the mail system. 3. Opening/replying to email from/to unknown persons is ASKING for more problems, and is what spammers/virus writers count on.
Unfortunately, the main distribution method for most of the virus/trojan/malware stuff on the internet today is email. Teaching users caution and how to safely do a little detective work is much better than just saying "try a reply", or "send email to the bogus address".
The other reply to this that suggested he check the headers is a more useful (and safer) tool.
On Wed, 2004-11-03 at 14:07 -0800, Richard E Miles wrote:
I am receiving mail addressed to someone else. My mail address is r.godzilla@comcast.net. I have received mail addressed to: r.godzilla@calamitygrowing.com and from: joe-blow@comcast.net. These are not forwarded mails. How is this possible? I use fetchmail to receive my mail. Is there anyway to stop this? These are just two examples. I have received similar miss addressed mail from other names also. Can a procmail rule be used to stop this? If so what would that rule be?
-- Richard E Miles Federal Way WA. registered linux user 46097
On Wed, 2004-11-03 at 16:07, Richard E Miles wrote:
I am receiving mail addressed to someone else. My mail address is r.godzilla@comcast.net. I have received mail addressed to: r.godzilla@calamitygrowing.com and from: joe-blow@comcast.net. These are not forwarded mails. How is this possible? I use fetchmail to receive my mail. Is there anyway to stop this? These are just two examples. I have received similar miss addressed mail from other names also. Can a procmail rule be used to stop this? If so what would that rule be?
Spammed mail probably due to the recent version of the Netsky virus. I have begun getting many mails (80 - 100) from that over the last week.
As long as you do NOT open any of the attachments you are probably OK. (And running Linux you are probably OK anyway.)
-- Richard E Miles Federal Way WA. registered linux user 46097