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I wanna hurt this guy!

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f0dder:
Curt: the spam filter should be blocking mails based on the content of the mail body, not just any of the header lines (to/from/subject). I thought SPAMfighter would do that, if not - it's useless.

There's little you can do about that trick anyway, and I can't see how that SPF thing would help even the slightest; all that's being done is using a bogus "From: " field in the mail header... it doesn't involve using your domains SMTP server or whatever.

Carol Haynes:
As f0dder says you should filter on content of the emails not the email address. If you filter on content you can block emails sent using any email address (even your own) without affecting legitimate mail.

That is one of the reasons I mentioned POPfile. It isn't a spam filter - when it is installed it knows nothing at all about spam. The point is that based on email content (not the header) it can accurately filter mail in any way you choose. One of thos ways is if you tell it which emails you consider spam.

As to overcoming the initial problem of stopping someone using your email in this way I have no idea. I have 5 domain names and I'd guess I get 200+ emails a day that are address to fictitious addresses beased on those domain names and also appearing to be sent from one of my legitmate addresses.

I have come to the conclusion the only solution is to filter them out in whatever way suits you and delete them. Reporting them to anti spam sites doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever (apart from using up your precious time).

If anyone knows any method of reporting abuse of an email address or domain that works I would like to know. The only way I can see of doing it is forcing hosting servers to validate that every email is actually sent via that server before delivery - but how or by whom that would be implemented I don't know. The only other alternative is to block all but digitally signed email (a bit like SSL websites) - but that would be expensive and rule most people out the email system at the moment.

Yahoo have started using a system called "Domain Keys" which tells you if the email actually originated from the domain it claims. However, they seem to be doing that on some sort of lookup table basis which is far from complete.

f0dder:
Well, a bunch of internet protocols are extremely lame, and SMTP is one of them. "Yes, but security wasn't a concern once they were created" - sorry, no excuse.

Darwin:
Curt - do you still have the offending e-mail? If so, have you "told" Spam Fighter that it is Spam? If not, I'd just identifiy it Spam Fighter as spam and move on. As fodder points out, your spam filter should be looking at both the header and the body (text) of the e-mail and shouldn't block legitimate e-mail from you. Try it and then send yourself a legitamite e-mail and see if it gets through - you can always go back to the original spam and tell Spam Fighter that it is not spam.

Also, my ISP and Yahoo both have a feature similar to PopFile built in. I have to access both via webmail to adjust settings, but I can configure both to insert a block of text at the start of the subject, enclosed in [] to identify it as potential spam. It's useful, though SpamBayes is so good it diverts these straight into my Junk Folder. Just a thought... Check out your ISP and webmail (if it's available) - you might find that you've already got this built in, so to speak.

Darwin:
As to overcoming the initial problem of stopping someone using your email in this way I have no idea...I have come to the conclusion the only solution is to filter them out in whatever way suits you and delete them. Reporting them to anti spam sites doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever (apart from using up your precious time).
--- End quote ---

Yes - I'd like to highlight this comment (emphasis is mine). It's been made before but must be made again - don't waste your time trying to stop this at the source as you will be wasting your time (sorry, I realise that this sounds defeatist!) - you're better off taking Carol's advice and filtering the offensive e-mails and getting on with your life! Of course if you do figure out how to stop this completely PLEASE let us know!

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