Experiencing the bad Internet: Email Spoofing
I just wanted to post a note on email spoofing. In the past two weeks, I’ve become a victim of this shitty practice, with my inbox inundated with thousands of all sorts of not-so-great spam, along with the thousands of mail-delivery failures that accompany a spamming storm of this sort.
To anyone receiving email allegedly from my domain (rickmahn.com) I apologize for any inconvenience it may cause you, but understand that I’m not generating this spam. I am in the process of reporting as many of these messages to the FTC as possible and also am working with my email server host (Google) to help identify, report and curtail as much of this unwanted traffic as I am able to.
This has been happening for about 2-3 weeks, and I’m most worried that my domain will be black-listed because of this spoofing event. Yes, I’ve published the SPF for my domain, and have enabled all technical means to deal with this problem, but this does not stop the people actually trying to spoof my domain (or potentially yours!). It’s all down to detective work at this point, reporting as many of these messages as I have time for around my real job and home life – not an easy task at all.
So, if you’ve gotten spammed by an email that seems to be originating from my domain, I apologize and understand your frustration – I also am being spammed (doubly so) as this happens – and my name and reputation is being affected because of this. The funny thing is that there are only three actual email address that send email from my domain, so it’s easy to tell what’s spam.
Any suggestions on other steps is appreciated!
