Email problems - help wanted

[Chris Bayley]

In the hope that someone can help this is the problem. My website email address has been cloned and is being used to send spam mail. The hosting company says it cannot do anything and neither it seems can virginmedia (virgin.net / ntlworld.com)

eg
mnichelini@bagpipeworld.co.uk <mnichelini@bagpipeworld.co.uk>
<fullrich@bagpipeworld.co.uk>

trash now contains 96,843 and the spam box a further 41,110

The spam filter set by virgin is also trapping legitimate emails but with the quantity sitting in the boxes it is impossible to open them and sort through them all. These cannot be cleared as there is a fault at virgin which the engineers are apparently looking into

Anyone trying to contact me do NOT use either the virgin.net address or the bagpipeworld.co.uk address

Use the 'christopher.bayley (at) ntlworld (dot) com' and send a PM as well

Thanks

Chris

[amckay]

Hi Chris
Seems email issues are the bain of your online presence. How about getting yourself a gmail account and using that as your primary account for your pipe making business and communications with customers? Owners of your sets have nothing but praise for your workmanship, but you don't want people discouraged by poor customer experience.
Hope it all works out.

[PJ]

This technology will only in tears. As the Mac ads say about PC, you should upgrade to an older system:

[Mike Hulme]

Seriously, PJ, the British Post Office couldn't find its' arse with both hands.

[projektio28]

Yes, but the British Post Office does act like a blind man in an orgy, they try to feel their way through it... (with apologies to the blind, orgy participants and of course, the BPO)

But seriously, I would highly recommend a GMAIL account as I have yet to receive a single piece of spam through their service, and I've been using them exclusively since they started!

Matt

[jack london]

I also highly recommend Gmail, but you might want to look at a product called " spamarrest"--- a friend uses it with great results. i think the price is $50 a year or $90 for two. Might be worth it to improve customer relations.

[PJ]

Seriously, PJ, the British Post Office couldn't find its' arse with both hands.

I'll never again be able to look at Postman Pat without your words coming back to haunt me:

[s1m0n]

My website email address has been cloned and is being used to send spam mail.

It sounds like your address is being spoofed as the sender address added to spam that's really coming from someplace else.

This is not an unusual situation, in fact, it happens to more or less everyone eventually, once spammers get your address.

If your inbox is filling up with 'mail not delivered' error messages from other people's mail servers to the point that you can't find your mail, set up a junk mail rule that screens out any that aren't coming from addresses in your address book. There's nothing you can do about it.

[Father Emmet]

As Simon says, you'll have to filter your mail. The free Mozilla Thunderbird is easy to configure. Set the filter to mark all e-mails (just as an example) to mark as spam all from the sender 'postmaster' or with the subject lines containing 'undeliverable' 'viagra' 'watches' (or whatever yours say) to go to the junk folder. To minimize real mail from going to junk mark your mail to customers with a 'return receipt request' so you will know if they got them. There are no doubt better replies to come, and more robust solutions, but this is free and will greatly reduce the volume of junk without having to block everyone not in your address book.
If you are hosting bagpipeworld yourself, there are opensource filters like SpamAssasin which are very good.