Email spoofing

[Mark H]

One of our domain names has been spoofed mercilessly for about a week now, with the result that hundreds of people are getting spam which appears to come from us (not good), and we are getting hundreds of automated returns back saying undeliverable etc (also not good).

We are on a shared server with 1&1 - is there any way we can stop this happening?

[Mike Hughes]

Not as far as I know.

The email system is pretty dumb and the 'from'/'return to' bits are just text sent as part of the header. They can be spoofed by the sender to say whatever they want and it makes no difference what kind of server you're on.

Mike

[fleetwood]

Unfortunately/annoyingly, this is a way of the world!
I haven't a way to stop the spoofing I'm afraid, but to stop the undeliverable notices driving you nuts, you may want to try adding a filter to your email client along the lines of "if message contains 'Undeliverable mail blah blah' redirect to myundelivered box". As the notices are automated for the most part, the spoofed mail is probably not all being delivered to end users, but is being rejected by the receiving mail servers, and sent back to you.

[jont]

Part of the joys of the spammers.

You personally can't stop it happening but RBL lists such as SPAMCOP and even AOL may block your domain and stop it automatically (for their clients) ... not good as genuine buyers from monitored domains will not receive email notifications and your failed delivery bounce rate will go up

[Mark H]

Exactly my concern - it seems crazy that we have no control over this - plus why pick on us. Perhaps we should just be chuffed that they consider us worth "using"!