My domain used by spammers

(may they have a slow and painful death)

[diggle]

Hi. My domain name is being used by spammers and consequently I am gettings loads of returned mail; failure notices; spam warnings etc. The return mail comes with random names and email prefixes(such as <Jim Smith> [e-mail]) It is getting serious. Is there anything I can do to stop it? Any advice welcome. Thanks.

[uncle_bob]

The short answer is no, unfortunately. Most domains at some time suffer from joejobbing. If it gets really bad, it may be worth putting a disclaimer/info on your website, and letting your ISP know, just incase they start getting too many spam complaints about your domain as most end users don't realise that it wasn't you who sent the email.

[nativenewyorker]

Not to mention that there are viruses nowadays that forge message headers. There really isn't anything that you can do to stop it.

[digitalv]

Is your mail SERVER being used or JUST the domain? If it's the mail server, you need to secure that crap :) Disable your open relays.

If it's just the domain, then as the others said nope ... there isn't anything you can do about it. If it's a ton of spam you may want to put something on your home page letting visitors know that it's not YOU sending out the spam. I would only do that if you start getting complaints, then instead of responding to them all you can just direct them to your home page.

[PatrickDeese]

Turn off your catch-all email for a couple of days.

At least then you don't have to download 10 million "failure delivery" notices.

Some one did this to one of my sites a few months ago and a couple of the bounces included the original spam messages - so I traced the affiliate ID and informed the Casino that they were promoting that affid #x was using UCE to promote their product, and that I considered receiving over 8000 bounce notices a Denial of Service Attack and that I held them responsible for not only closing the individual's affiliate account, but requested that they furnish me with the spammer's contact information in order to initiate legal proceedings.

Within 2 hours I was informed that the affiliate account had been closed.

They didn't disclose the affiliate's info, of course, as I am sure they couldn't legally do that - I just threw that in so that they'd think I was rabid enough to sue.

Moral of the story - hit the spammers in the wallet.

[diggle]

Thanks everyone. I appreciate your advice.

[diggle]

Is it advisable to use TMDA to receive my email or will that make the situation worse?