[Robbie]

Why am I suddenly getting hundreds of undeliverable email messages?

For the last few days I've been getting hundreds of "undeliverable email" messages. The sender of the undeliverable email is a garbage name at my domain. I think some bot is just cranking out these names, having found out my domain name. I'm pretty sure there is no virus on my computer; also I've been using only webmail for a while. Is there any way to make this stop?

[admin]

You can't. It's very easy to forge the From and Reply-To address in emails, and many companies simply bounce rejected and undeliverable messages to these addresses, even though everybody knows it's not where they originated. There have been attempts at patching this defect in the internet email system, and the leading example is SPF (Sender Policy Framework).

With SPF, you publish a record that states explicitly that, for example, "XYZ only sends email from IP address 123.45.678.90 and the mailservers at xyz.co.uk" and so on. A service provider that uses SPF, such as AOL, can check incoming emails, and if they didn't originate from the stated places, discard them as forgeries. SPF is not in widespread use, but it probably does have enough users to reduce the volume of forged email.

Full details of how to set up SPF are published on the Open SPF website at www.openspf.org. If you control your own domain, the site has a wizard that will enable you to publish an SPF record. If not, you can contact your ISP and encourage it to start using SPF.

So while you cannot stop people from forging your address, you can reduce the amount of forged email that is delivered.

You could also considering changing your catch-all email address. A catch-all address is useful if your name, or your business name, is often misspelled, because it will accept all email sent to your domain name (anything@xyz.co.uk). You can change this and only accept email sent to specific addresses (jim@xyz.co.uk, sales@xyz.co.uk and so on). You can then reject emails sent to unspecified addresses at the server. However, your domain should have working postmaster and abuse accounts.

Finally, you can improve your spam defences by getting your mail from a server running Spam Assassin, or routing your email via a cleaning service that uses Postini, Spam Assassin. Spam Interceptor is a web-based option. If you have to do your own filtering, try Post Armor, which being Java is cross-platform, or MailWasher Pro for PCs. These can delete unwanted mail on the server, without downloading it. Both have free versions.

Web extra:: It's also worth reading a blog post by Jeremy Zawodny on Using Gmail as My Spam Filter.

[giay]

If I maybe right, system undeliverable messages occurs when recepient's inbox is full . . . and these things happened long time ago when free emails lke yahoo and hotmail can only provide limited space. But now that these free email hosts have become bigger in space, there are still failed message sending?

[Philoram]

You might consider setting up a 'catch all' email account for your domain, and then having your email client download those right into the recycle bin when you check email. If they end up getting stuck on the server, over time they will eat up a lot of space.

[willyable]

Originally Posted by giay

If I maybe right, system undeliverable messages occurs when recepient's inbox is full . . . and these things happened long time ago when free emails lke yahoo and hotmail can only provide limited space. But now that these free email hosts have become bigger in space, there are still failed message sending?

Definately irritating but as far as the recipients email being full, what can you do?