More Spam Than You
by Ted Slater on 07/30/2008 at 2:47 PM
I've tweaked my servers and e-mail clients through the years, so I only receive a few spams a day.
But one day last month the trickle turned into a torrent. My inbox showed 1,000 new e-mails. Then another 5,000. Then another 10,000. By the time I shut down my mail server, there were over 22,000 e-mails clogging my account. Here's a screenshot (click it to see it full-size), after I had removed some of the spam:
What happened was that a Chinese spammer, perhaps a member of a spam gang who put me on their naughty list, had used my domain name in his "from" field, making his spam look as though I had sent it. A percentage of those e-mails were undeliverable, and so they were bounced back to the "sender" -- me.
I suspect he sent millions of e-mails, and I was just beginning to see the barrage of those that had bounced back. Good thing I caught it when I did.
So do I win the record for most number of unwelcome e-mails in a 24-hour period?
1. Mike said the following at 3:07 PM on Jul 30:
I had this happen to me one time. A spammer used my e-mail to spoof his account, and all the bounces came right back to me. Really ugly, because my ISP shut off my account for 24 hours until we got it straightened out. You have my sympathy.
2. anonymous said the following at 3:17 PM on Jul 30:
This happened to me, and it eventually died off after a day or two. A huge annoyance though.
3. Candice Watters said the following at 3:22 PM on Jul 30:
What did you do when you caught it?
4. Rachael said the following at 7:56 PM on Jul 30:
Wow, 22,000 spams! Craziness. I only get a few spam messages to my gmail account, and those usually go straight to the spam folder. I do get some unwanted mail there as well, but that is pretty much my fault because I put that e-mail down - and it's not that bad -- just usually I don't read them. I tend to give my yahoo e-mail I don't check very often when I need to give my e-mail for something that may end up sending junk messages. My hotmail & yahoo, which I don't check as often, get tons of junk; a lot of which I deserve (mail lists; travelocity or something I must have signed up for)...Anyway, it's nice to keep most of the spam and the bulk of the unwanted mail out of the current email address.
5. Mike said the following at 8:21 PM on Jul 30:
Well, in my case, the slammer switched to another victim as soon as my account got turned off (apparently), so it was just a matter of calling the ISP and having them compare the IP address information in the headers where the messages originated with the address where they were bounced back to. After review, they could tell I'd been spoofed.
Still annoying, though.
6. Jason said the following at 9:56 PM on Jul 30:
My sympathies--this has happened to me as well. My ISP shut down my account after 500 e-mails "bounced back."
I actually use three e-mail addresses. One of them I keep just so if I register for anything that I think I might get spammed back with online so I have the other two for purely personal (familial) and professional reasons. I check the "spam" account less often and give the other two addresses only to people I trust enough to correspond with.
7. Beatrice81 said the following at 10:22 PM on Jul 30:
"So do I win the record for most number of unwelcome e-mails in a 24-hour period?"
Um, if we say yes, do you promise to check your urge to write such myopic, self-pitying posts?
8. Janelle said the following at 12:02 AM on Jul 31:
ew.
9. Sarah Riley said the following at 2:46 AM on Aug 1:
I used to like Spam as a treat at Christmas time.
But seriously, I quite enjoy reading my email spams (the small doses I get), sometimes they are the only source of humour in my day and quite a hoot.
10. John S. said the following at 12:48 PM on Aug 1:
Ted, That's more e-mail than I've received in my entire life! (I know, since I keep nearly every message.) You've definitely won the gold, sodium-free medal in the Spam olympics.
I can feel your pain, though. As a web admin, I once accidentally forwarded an old, spoofed address through to both my email address and the address of about 6 of my friends.
Within 8 hours, I got about 1500 email bounce notices, 2-3 of them VERY angry emails from those friends saying they'd also gotten the bounce notices.
So be thankful it wasn't your fault, and you didn't take other people down with you!
11. Tami said the following at 1:05 PM on Aug 1:
I was getting spam that said, "Christian Daters Wanted." I wondered what I had signed up for that "earned" me these emails. I couldn't think of anything.
Then I heard that some of my married, nonChristian friends were getting it.
:)
12. Ruben Ravatsås said the following at 4:02 AM on Aug 2:
You win. The most I've had is a little over a thousand. That was when I used my email-account as a catch-all address for the domain.