Strange Return Emails...

Hey all - for the past few weeks I've been getting these strange return emails in one of my web-based email accounts. They sometimes come from different sources, but the text is always the same:

Quote:

---

I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses:

Undeliverable to [email protected]

---

The email address contained in the message body is sometimes different.

Does anyone know what's going on here? I have no virii on my PC, and I just got done last week doing the usual 6-month format-the-hard-drive-and-reinstall-everything exercise. I get these messages at a rate of about two per week.

Any insight would be helpful.

Thx,

l00p

Are you sure it's not a friend with say the goldfish virus (which mimics an undeliverable email message)? Check the source IP of the email and see if that matches the IP of someone you know.

Also, it is very likely that a Klez or other MM worm spoofed your address and you are getting the undeliverable message from the target system.

Not much you can go about them. MSMitten's suggestion of looking at the internet headers of the email is a good idea. That will give you a trace of where the message came from and what route it took to get to you.

You can take the IP information you get from the header and to go to:

http://www.samspade.org/ssw/

to check out the real origins.

Thanks guys - I'll check into it.
The web-based email I use is very security orientated (www.safe-mail.net), and provide detailed header information, as well tell me whom it actually came from, instead of the return addresses.

The address this last one came from is not a familiar one. Should I contact this person..?

Not necessarily. If it's a repeat, perhaps but it could be a sneaky way to collect email addresses for spam lists..

Good call MSMittens.

It is always the best to just delete these things. Ignore them. There are hundreds of ways and means to collect working email addresses, IPs and such. This is, probably, just another such item.

Unless you have a compelling reason to want to contact the indiviual on the other end of this email, just hit delete.
;-)

Looks like that'll be what I do. I'll just set up *another* spam filter..