What is Undelivered mail returned to sender spamhaus?

Spamhaus is one of the larger IP services that keep track of, and blacklist known spamming addresses.

Most likely, a blacklisted spammer is trying to spoof your Gmail address and you are getting the notices because your address is in the sender field.

The only thing you can really do is change the password on your Gmail account just in case someone has hacked into it (guessed your password). Also, check your account and make sure the backdoor Google has an option is off.

Read this page under the section, Someone is sending messages from my e-mail address!. Then follow the link in that section, which goes here. Check your Gmail account to see if email delegation is on. If it is, turn it off!

Click on the word "here" in my previous post, which is a blue colored link. Go to the bottom of the page that opens where it gives the instructions for, Remove delegated access to your account.

I hope you don't mean wheel in OS X. The user account "wheel" belongs to the OS, as is "the big wheel", or "top dog". The OS has to have a way to give itself complete access to do anything in order to perform certain operations. Do not even think of attempting to remove it if this is the wheel you're referring to.

Oh, I get what you mean. Yes, "wheel" is a bit of a vague term. "Gear" would be much easier to understand since that's what the button looks like.

So, click the gear and choose settings. Click on the "Accounts and Import" tab. Look at the "Grant access to your account:" section. If it looks like this…

…then no one else has given themselves backdoor access to your Gmail account. If you do see any unrecognized email addresses there, then they have. Highlight any account listed in that section and delete them.

Do this FIRST if there are any so the hacker does not receive confirmation of your password change, or they'll just let themselves back in and add themselves to that same field again. Or worse, change the password in an attempt to lock you out of your own Gmail account.

Then a spammer is spoofing your address in the emails they send out. Your name is in the sender field, so you get the bounce notices even though the email didn't originate from you in any way.

Spammers will use an address for a week or so, and then move on to someone else's before most automated systems blacklist your address, which prevents their spam from getting anywhere. So they stop using that address and torture somebody else.

The Spamhaus report is why your emails aren't getting through. A spammer has so greatly abused your email address via spoofing that Spamhaus has blacklisted it. Email servers worldwide automatically pick up updates from Spamhaus and other services daily to update their lists of blacklisted addresses. Once blacklisted, nothing from that address gets through any email server with that address in the list.

Basically, a spammer has, at least for the moment, rendered your email address useless. At this point, I'd delete the old account and create a new one. Let only those people who need to know what your new address is and have them add it right away so you can start sending them emails. This of course means calling them on the phone to in order to get that information to them. Make sure your new address has a very difficult to guess password. No words or names. Something at least 12 characters long using letters and numbers. Such as:

CtvMUdf3zDTl

It is a lot of work to do that. You may want to sit on it for a week and see how it goes.

I found out about Spamhaus some years ago when a spammer was doing the same thing to my address. Once email servers started picking up Spamhaus' blacklist with my address on it, the spammer moved on. Does them no good to continue sending out millions of pieces of junk mail with that address. Someone is paying them to do the mailings, and when they don't get through, they don't get paid.

After a couple of weeks, the Spamhaus notices stopped coming in and my address apparently got released from the blacklist as it started working again.

You may know this already, but a couple of email rules. The big one. Never, never, ever click the unsubscribe link on junk mail. All that does is tell the spammer this is a live address. Then two things happen. One, your address is immediately sold to other spammers, and the junk mail you get increases - a lot. Two, spammers will, if not right away, eventually use your address for spoofing.