Getting bombarded "Deliver Status Notification (Failure)" messages

Question

Getting bombarded "Deliver Status Notification (Failure)" messages

I'm getting bombarded with "Deliver Status Notification (Failure)" messages from an email address I do not have in my addresses.Here's a sample:

"The following message to <kmjohnson@tmo.blackberry.net> was undeliverable.
The reason for the problem:
5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'5.1.1 <kmjohnson@tmo.blackberry.net>:
Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual alias table'
Reporting-MTA: dns; as05.bis.na.blackberry.com

Final-Recipient: rfc822;kmjohnson@tmo.blackberry.net
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0 (permanent failure)
Remote-MTA: dns; [172.20.192.51]
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'5.1.1 <kmjohnson@tmo.blackberry.net>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual alias table' (delivery attempts:"

Help!!

Macbook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Mar 12, 2010 9:59 AM

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Answer 1

edclange

Level 5

4,860 points

Mar 12, 2010 11:27 AM in response to William Worthington

Most likely, someone used your e-mail address to send spam e-mails to several thousand addresses. It's very easy for a spammer to do this, and requires no "hacking" at all. You're getting the failure responses from all of the addresses that were invalid.

What kind of "bombardment" are you experiencing? A few dozen? Hundreds? Last time this happened to me, I received 1.7 million of those messages across five days. I created a temporary mail rule to delete them as they were received, and turned off the "Store deleted messages on the server" option.

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Answer 2

edclange

Level 5

4,860 points

Mar 12, 2010 5:33 PM in response to William Worthington

There's nothing you can do about it, other than creating a mail rule that automatically deletes the messages. It'll probably stop in a few days.

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Answer 3

WBW

Level 4

1,265 points

Mar 12, 2010 11:17 AM in response to William Worthington

Is it just one address?

Often spammers will use a random email in the FROM field. If it happens to be yours you will receive all the delivery error message.

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Answer 4

Mar 12, 2010 12:46 PM in response to edclange

It's in the hundreds. 20+ per day.
the email address kmjohnson@tmo.blackberry.net is a co-workers name but that email address isn't hers. She does however have a Blackberry.

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Answer 5

Mar 12, 2010 3:07 PM in response to William Worthington

Your From address is apparently "spoofed" into the Reply To header, in an infected PC or device other than your Mac, but you get the failure notices.

Ernie

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Answer 6

Mar 12, 2010 3:38 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

So how do I "un-spoof" this other device?

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