Hard Bounce emails back to spam sender

Question

Hard Bounce emails back to spam sender

macOS Sierra

Native Mail Application.

iMac and Macbook Pro

Some jerk hacked ATT.com website got my email address then started sending thousands of emails to distract me from the fact that the order an iPhone when 7 came out. I was able to stop the iPhone from being delivered overnight.The jerk used monthly payments. Now i'm still dealing with emails that the hacker signed me up for from all over the country and the world.

There has to be something i can do without having to change my email address.

The are all going to junk box which is great but doesn't solve the problem. I would like to send all of those 300 junk emails i receive a day back enmass with a hard bounce code no such email address exists on the feedback loop you send back to the ISP.

The ironic thing is I am an email marketing manager and I deal with soft bounces and hard bounces. If we have a hard bounce with a certain code from the feedback loop we can tell the email address is no longer valid and it gets permanently held after 3 attempts. There has to be something i can do without have to change my email address.

Do I have to go to created my own script?

Help JJ in LA

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016, 4 TBT3), iOS 10.2.1, Version 10.12.2

Posted on Jan 27, 2017 12:53 PM

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Answer 1

Jan 28, 2017 12:52 PM in response to Jeffrey Jerome

Hi,

Sounds more like a job for ATT

8:52 pm Saturday; January 28, 2017

 iMac 2.5Ghz i5 2011 (Sierra)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 iPhone 6 iOS 10.x and an iPad (2)

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Answer 2

Jan 30, 2017 9:09 AM in response to Jeffrey Jerome

If this person has signed your email address up to various legitimate mailing lists then in theory you can click on the unsubscribe button in such emails.

Clicking on the unsubscribe button on disreputable mailing lists emails and similarly sending bounce back messages to such dodgy sites is in general not only a waste of time but merely confirms the email address exists and encourages them to send more emails.

Now if this dodgy person has faked your email address in order to send emails out pretending to be you and you are now getting automated replies and perhaps bounce backs this is a different situation. For this the best approach is one implied by Ralph Johns (UK). ATT should be configuring their mail server and domain name to define what mail servers are legitimately allowed to send emails for their domain so if you have an email address of jsmith at att dot com then only emails sent via their server should be allowed to send emails using such an email address, and furthermore in order to send emails via their server you should have a valid email account protected by a password and be using authenticated SMTP.

If the spammer then sends emails pretending to be you via their own mail server or a hijacked computer they will not be able to include in these fake emails the correct information to prove they are authorised to send emails for that domain name.

There are several standards to implement such checks including SPF, DomainKeys and so on. Only the owner/administrator of a domain name and mail server can configure these, mere users of say a hosted email service cannot.

These steps are not a complete cure but more and more systems are using them and in theory this should reduce the amount of fake emails if not spam. (These are not the same things.)

It appears att dot com does use SPF but has it set to 'soft' fail so it does not block fakes but merely labels them as such. It also appears that either they have not set up DomainKeys or not set it up correctly.

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Answer 3

cdhw

Level 4

3,594 points

Jan 27, 2017 4:18 PM in response to Jeffrey Jerome

Start using a new email address. Don't waste time trying to bounce emails back to the 'senders' because you will not succeed in getting the genie back into the bottle.

C.

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