Just when you think the spam can't get any worse...

[lethargic_man]

Since I junked my old email address, I've not had too much problem with spam. I've got maybe a few dozen every day, and the filters in Pine are able to deal with most of them (courtesy of my domain name ISP adding a header identifying spam messages). When away from home the web interface I use for checking home email also has filters, though not as sophisticated. In either case, until a few months ago, no spam was getting past the filters; and since then, what did could be manually deleted.

Until this morning.

In the last quarter of an hour I've got about 340 bounce messages for spam messages forged from email addresses at my domain name, plus a further 40 spam, and the torrent is showing no sign of stopping.

I hope this isn't going to keep up indefinitely.

[ETA: Phew: No, it seems to have levelled off. And with a whole bunch of new filters, and change in policy to hide deleted email on this webform, my inbox is back under control. Though of course this means I can no longer eyeball check to weed out false positives...]

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

If you indiscriminately accept mail to all possible addresses at a domain then you're going to see a lot of backscatter. Moreover the targets of the spam won't be able to use SMTP callouts to reject mail from bogus senders (which is, almost invariably now, spam).

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

It seemed like a good idea at the time (and remained so for several years): spin off unique addresses for everything I signed up to, so that should one address start attracting spam I can killfile it and not be bothered.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

It can still work: keep a fixed string of some sort in the local part. The traditional approach was username+<variant>@domain but there are a lot of morons out there who won't accept '+' in domain names.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Err, in local parts rather; they're not allowed in mail domains anyway.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

That was what I had. Thunderbird handled it beautifully, though.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Your icon for this ought not to be so much "ותכתב אסתר" so much as:

ותכתב אסתר׃ ואמרו לה לא נקבל את האגרת שלך׃
ותכתב אסתר׃ ואמרו לה לא נקבל את האגרת שלך׃
ותכתב אסתר׃ ואמרו לה לא נקבל את האגרת שלך׃
ותכתב אסתר׃ ואמרו לה לא נקבל את האגרת שלך׃
ותכתב אסתר׃ ואמרו לה לא נקבל את האגרת שלך׃
ותכתב אסתר׃ ואמרו לה לא נקבל את האגרת שלך׃
ותכתב אסתר׃ ואמרו לה לא נקבל את האגרת שלך׃
ותכתב אסתר׃ ואמרו לה לא נקבל את האגרת שלך׃

Etc etc etc...