ChatterBank1 min ago
Delivery Status Notification (Failure) but i didnt message them!
10 Answers
i recently received a Delivery Status Notification (Failure) to my hotmail account saying a message had failed,
but i did not send this supposed recipient an email and nobody else has access to my account, or even uses my computer,
does anyone know how or why this would happen, or how to contact hotmail to tell them about the problem?
but i did not send this supposed recipient an email and nobody else has access to my account, or even uses my computer,
does anyone know how or why this would happen, or how to contact hotmail to tell them about the problem?
Answers
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When spammers send out hundreds of thousands of emails, they often 'fake' the sender's address by either using a real address found somewhere on the web or just by getting their computer to generate loads of real looking addresses such as [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc. Some of those addresses will be entirely imaginary, while others may actually exist
They'll also use the same method for selecting the recipients of the spam messages. (i.e. they might use addresses they know to be real but they're just as likely to make up loads of likely-looking addresses, in the knowledge that some will actually turn out to be real ones).
A spammer has used your email address as the 'return address' in one or more spam messages. There might be loads of people who've received spam which apparently came from you. But at least one of those messages was sent to a non-existent address, so a 'bounce' message has been sent to you (because the receiving server thinks that you sent the spam)..
If you've only received one such message, it's probably just a 'one off' and you can ignore it. However some people are unlucky because a spammer will pick their address as the apparent sender of, say, a million emails. Given that the majority of those mails never get delivered, the innocent person whose address was used might end up with hundreds of thousands of 'bounce' messages flooding into his or her inbox. (For a while, I was getting around 3000 bounce messages per day to one of my email addresses).
Chris
They'll also use the same method for selecting the recipients of the spam messages. (i.e. they might use addresses they know to be real but they're just as likely to make up loads of likely-looking addresses, in the knowledge that some will actually turn out to be real ones).
A spammer has used your email address as the 'return address' in one or more spam messages. There might be loads of people who've received spam which apparently came from you. But at least one of those messages was sent to a non-existent address, so a 'bounce' message has been sent to you (because the receiving server thinks that you sent the spam)..
If you've only received one such message, it's probably just a 'one off' and you can ignore it. However some people are unlucky because a spammer will pick their address as the apparent sender of, say, a million emails. Given that the majority of those mails never get delivered, the innocent person whose address was used might end up with hundreds of thousands of 'bounce' messages flooding into his or her inbox. (For a while, I was getting around 3000 bounce messages per day to one of my email addresses).
Chris
PS: I've just thought of another more worrying reason why you might have received that mail.
One way of sending a virus to someone is to hide it an attachment that the recipient is encouraged to open. To do this, somebody could fake a 'bounce' message, to make it look as if you've genuinely sent out a message which has failed to get through. When you read the message, you're naturally curious as to which email you sent wasn't delivered. The malicious mail then tells you to open an attachment to read your original message (which, of course, does not exist). Instead, when you open the attachment, you load a virus onto your PC. (I've just remembered receiving something like this myself, a couple of years ago. Fortunately, I spotted it before opening the attachment). It might be a wise precaution to run a virus scan on your PC, to check that you've not inadvertently opened a malicious file.
One way of sending a virus to someone is to hide it an attachment that the recipient is encouraged to open. To do this, somebody could fake a 'bounce' message, to make it look as if you've genuinely sent out a message which has failed to get through. When you read the message, you're naturally curious as to which email you sent wasn't delivered. The malicious mail then tells you to open an attachment to read your original message (which, of course, does not exist). Instead, when you open the attachment, you load a virus onto your PC. (I've just remembered receiving something like this myself, a couple of years ago. Fortunately, I spotted it before opening the attachment). It might be a wise precaution to run a virus scan on your PC, to check that you've not inadvertently opened a malicious file.
oooo, nasty, luckily i didn't open any attachments, as i didn't recognize the recipients address i wasn't interested in what i didn't send!!
my pc does regular checks so hopefully anything dodgy will be caught
and that's ok, i try to remember to reply when someone is kind enough to answer my question, i would if i was talking to them in person i don't see why this should be any different, particularly when you gave such a answer, would have taken me ages to type that!!
my pc does regular checks so hopefully anything dodgy will be caught
and that's ok, i try to remember to reply when someone is kind enough to answer my question, i would if i was talking to them in person i don't see why this should be any different, particularly when you gave such a answer, would have taken me ages to type that!!
did you know the recipient? I ask because this happened to me recently, but the recipients were all people who had actually sent me emails that I'd kept - which suggests someone, or at least some robot, had actually hacked into my hotmail account to send the messages to people I knew, they hadn't just faked my address to send out multiple messages (though the message sent out was in fact spam).
I changed my e-mail password and the Delivery Status Notification (Failure)s stopped. I discovered this idea after reading a message from another victim of this type of spam. They said that they changed their password and the "failures" stopped pouring in. So I changed my e-mail password too. The "failures" stopped. The normal mail kept coming in. But just to test this theory I returned my password back to it's original to see if the spam would start again. It did. 30 messages came in. So I changed my password back and the Delivery Status Notification (Failure)s stopped....again.
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