IT Queries: Computer problems answered

I have a problem with spammers using my domain name to send out their spam. They must forge the “From” address so that the spam looks like it comes from my domain, when it could in fact be coming from any PC in the world. In many cases, the “From” address that the spammer uses isn’t quite right anyway, eg. instead of myname@mydomain.com.au, it might be gobbledigook@mydomain.com.au.

The problems are:

1) My domain sometimes gets blacklisted which makes it impossible for me to send my own email to my own customers

2) I get the occasional complaint from people who think I’ve actually sent them the spam

3) And most annoyingly, my inbox is frequently full of literally hundreds of  ”Postmaster” auto-responses, because many (possibly most) of the email addresses that the spammer sends to are not legitimate addresses, but because my domain is in the “From” or “Reply To” field,  I’m the bunny who ends up with all the automated “Your email could not be delivered” errors!

This seems to happen in waves – it won’t happen for ages, and then I will be bombarded for a couple of days by this nuisance.

Is there any way of preventing this from happening?

Spammers use a number of ways to avoid detection and one of them is to hijack someone else’s email address or domain as the return address. 

The frustrating thing is there’s little you can do about the problem and it is a really irritating problem that affects many people who own domains.

One thing you should check is how your website is hosted. Spam checkers shouldn’t disqualify your address because of this and it sounds like you are using shared hosting where the provider isn’t doing all they can to discourage spammers from using their service.

You may find changing hosting services will fix the blacklist problem

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